


Two Sides of One Heart

by YesBothWays



Series: The Even-More-Secret Secret Life of Agent Margaret Carter [2]
Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Children, F/F, Feminist Themes, Femslash, Marriage, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-24 22:01:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 51,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3785830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YesBothWays/pseuds/YesBothWays
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in 1958, Peggy Carter finds herself thrown when Angie Martinelli, who is well known as the actress Angie Sutton now, comes to New York.  When their past relationship flares up, Peggy finds comfort and solidarity from Daniel, who is now her husband and the father of their two children, Lynn and Steven.  With Daniel's support, Peggy and Angie find a way to reforge their friendship.  Later, the three of them support one another through a reshaping of their lives to bring the past and present together in the most loving way they can find.   </p><p>This is sort of an elegant, often emo story, where people treat each other with a great deal of love and care.  Many feminist and queer themes underlie the narrative.  Also, there are quite a few sex scenes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Feel of Memory

**Author's Note:**

> 1958

            Peggy whisked a pan of milk heating on the gas stove to dissolve the honey she had just added. As she kept the milk from burning, she pushed through the thicket of legal jargon in her mind. She was sorting through a pile of New York legislation relevant to women's rights. She hoped to have something to report when she met with the other women at work on Monday, and this was Thursday evening.

            She tried to clear her mind a bit, as she had come into the kitchen to "get some air" as Daniel would have joked about this same feeling at the office. She put two cups of tea on a tray and added a plate of biscuits for Steve and Lynn and poured the honeyed milk into mugs. She brought the tray to where they were working at the coffee table. Steven was struggling with his math this year, and Lynn was reading a book along with them, as everyone was in the living room. She was pushing herself trying to read _Anne of Green Gables_ , and Peggy suspected she went to get it so Steven would not feel on his own in his struggle, as she had always easily understood math. Everyone was in the thick of a personal struggle, Peggy thought. She smiled a bit, as she looked around the room and took a long drink of her tea.

            Peggy brought the cup of tea for Daniel and placed it on the edge of the desk nearby. He said thanks in a way that indicated to Peggy that did not really register its presence and would not drink it. He'd been staring at maps of the coast on the wall for at least twenty minutes. He had been wanting to do a side project with some friends from the Coast Guard all year, and he felt behind on it.

            Peggy put her arm over Daniel's shoulder so that her hand rested on the other side of his chest and pulled him close. She looked at the map over his other shoulder. He took the pen from between his lips, as he tried to break his concentration and respond to Peggy.

            "Smoke a pipe, darling," Peggy said and patted his chest before letting him go.

            Daniel glanced at the pen that had been in his mouth. He glanced at Peggy and over at Lynn and Steven. He went to open the window to see what the temperature was outside. No one else liked the smoke, so he rarely smoked in the house. He found that smoking helped him to think, though, when he was intensely concentrated.

            Peggy suspected he would have a breakthrough as much for stepping away as smoking. The phone rang as Daniel was puffing smoke out the window. He left the room to go and answer it. He popped his head around the corner.

            "It's for you," Daniel said. Peggy stood up with a last word of encouragement to Steven, who had been struggling with his math homework. Daniel took a drink of his tea, as he began staring at the maps again. "It's your friend, Angie," he told Peggy as she passed.

            Peggy glanced at his back as she turned to go into the other room. He meant Angie from work, she figured. Yet she found herself wishing it would be Angie Martinelli on the line when she picked up. She felt dismissive of her own wish and thought it funny she had the thought.

            "Hello," Peggy said.

            "Peg?" Angie said. Peggy stood a moment in silence. It really was the Angie she wanted. She found her thoughts flicker over the instinctive question of whether this was waking life or a dream. She realized she had not said anything and took another second to find a thought. "You there, love?" Angie said softly. She sounded slightly coy in the face of Peggy's silence.

            "Yes," Peggy said. "Sorry. Angie. I did not think it should be you."

            "I know. I'm sorry," Angie said.

            "That's all right," Peggy said uncertain what else to say. She sort of cleared her throat. She thought of several other things to say but they all cluttered into her mind at once and made her stall again. Angie picked up the conversation.

            "I got a little news," Angie said.

            "Yes," Peggy said in encouragement that she should go on. She felt strangely confident that Angie was about to say that she was going to get married. And she had an irrational fear that she might say it was to Howard Stark.

            "My grandfather passed away a couple nights ago. I'm going to fly into New York early tomorrow morning," Angie said. There was a long pause. "Can I see you, Peg?" she asked. Her tone was mild and eager, and Peggy found her own voice in response.

            "Yes, of course," Peggy said. "I'd love to. I can take the day. Where should I meet you?" Peggy picked the pencil up off a notepad by the phone and wrote down everything Angie said. She asked Peggy to come to her hotel on the waterfront at noon. It would be quite a trek out. Peggy looked over what she had written a moment, as her mind mapped the route she would take. She realized she had not spoken for a long moment. "Yes, I will be there," Peggy said.

            "Good," Angie said with clear delight. There was another pause then Angie added in a casual tone, "I'll understand if you change your mind."

            "Of course, I won't. I'll be glad to see you," Peggy said. She felt her tone came out a bit stiff at the edges. There must have been enough warmth in it, though, because Angie laughed just a bit on the other end of the line.

            "Okay," Angie said. "Bye for now."

            "Bye," Peggy said. She hung up the phone.

            As Peggy came back into the room, Daniel looked at her over his shoulder.

            "Was that Angie from work?" he asked.

            "No, Angie Sutton," Peggy said. Angie had changed her last name several years ago for her acting career. Peggy still thought of it as an alias.

            "I thought so," he said. "Hey, kids, your mom just got a call from a famous actress." Lynn and Steven looked up at her.

            "You're bluffing," Steven said trying to call him on it. He was used to Daniel's jokes. They both delighted in catching Daniel out on his fibs.

            "She was not a famous actress when I met her," Peggy said in response. The kids were looking at her, surprised that she did not refute Daniel's words. He chuckled before taking a drink of his tea and turning back to his project. He went to jot something on a notepad on the desk, which gave Peggy a small feeling of vicarious triumph.

            Peggy sat down with Lynn and Steven and dug back into the pile of legislation she was reading through. She could never read legal speak after eight o'clock and wanted to make headway. She wore out quickly tonight, though, and realized it was because of the phone call she had received. She felt a bit thrown. She could not really imagine what it would be like to see Angie tomorrow. It all felt rather sudden.

            Peggy ended up putting the children to bed that night, as Daniel finally got moving on his ideas. She got dressed for bed and read a little piece of a novel in Russian, a practice she used to keep from losing the language. When Daniel came, she could tell he was happy with his progress on his ideas and no longer distracted. He sat down in the brown easy chair beside the bed. He pulled off his clothes as they spoke.

            "Was your friend Angie all right?" Daniel asked. "Nothin' bad?"

            "Just that her grandfather died this week," Peggy said. Daniel made a severe sound that conveyed a distant but felt sense of empathy.

            "They close?" he asked.

            "No, they weren't. She's not very upset really," Peggy said. "She is coming to New York for the funeral. I'm going to go and meet her for lunch tomorrow," Peggy said. She realized she was not quite sure that it was for lunch and added, "Or drinks or something."

            "Try not to forget the way home," he teased. Daniel climbed into bed beside her. He smiled warmly after he said this. He meant it was a joke to lighten her mood. Peggy gave him the mildest punch on the arm, as he patted the covers back down over himself.

            "No teasing," she said.

            "I'm not teasing," he said. "Might be flirting though." Peggy made an excited "oh really" sound, as he leaned over and kissed her.

            Peggy could feel at once that the kiss was inclined to become more and put her book away on the bedside table. She turned off her own lamp and left the one on Daniel's side on. She climbed into his lap and kissed him more fully. After eight years of marriage, she never got to where she could have a thought while kissing Daniel. He had unbuttoned the shirt of the pajamas she wore already when she leaned back and reached in to run his hands over her skin. So Peggy did not think much more about her plans the next day the rest of that night.

 

            Peggy made her way across New York to the fine hotel. They were right on the water, and the wind carried the smells of salt and sea life. She heard the distinct sound of ship's horn out on the water. She came in and began to look about for a stairwell.

            "May I help you?" the man behind the counter said loudly. There was probably security at a place like this, Peggy realized, and she walked up to the counter.

            "Yes, I'm here for Ms. Sutton in 36C," Peggy said mildly. She watched the gentleman eye her up and down and felt her own back become more rigid. She felt certain he summed up the entire cost of her wardrobe in an instant and grew skeptical of her presence in response.

            "And you _are_?" he said. His tone almost made Peggy laugh. She held it in, as she felt it would only cause problems.

            "My name is Margaret Carter," she said. He opened up a bound book filled with ledger and ran through a list. Peggy thought to wonder whether Angie might have put her down as Margaret Sousa. The man spoke before she grew worried.

            "Ah, yes," the man said as he found her name.

            Apparently, Peggy thought with some cynicism, there would be a public record of this meeting. She had the thought that Margaret Sousa would have been a alias. It would not have led back to anyone's file, as no such person existed. Margaret Carter would lead anyone right to herself. Someone with as much interaction with the government as she had would be filed under high priority. When the man had found her name, his entire demeanor changed in an instant. He politely leaned forward to point and tell Peggy the way.

            "Thank you," she said as she walked away from him. She went the elevator he pointed out and called it. Peggy's mind mulled over the experience at the counter. It reminded her of the few times she went undercover in especially elite scenes. She had to wield a presence that made it clear she belonged there. She felt a faint smile remembering it now. She had to wonder how Angie was getting on with it all. This was one thing to come and visit such a place, but living it would be hard.

            Another gentleman stood in the hall on the third floor. There were only two doors, and Peggy wondered just how boring his job was. He knocked for her and led her in and announced her. Peggy saw why, though, as she led her through. Angie's room had a balcony, and she was out on it. She had a drink nearby.

            "Peg," Angie said with a smile. Peggy smiled back, but she found it hard to read Angie's face. Her expression seemed veiled to Peggy. Angie nodded to the young man, who stood waiting. "Can I get you a drink?" Angie asked Peggy.

            "No, thank you," Peggy said to the young man.

            "That'll be all, Charlie, thank you," Angie said. He tipped his cap and left. Peggy could hear the water. She looked out at the bay a moment.

            "Like the view?" Angie said. Peggy turned and looked Angie over. She was wearing a stunningly fine red, patterned dress with a V-line and a few buttons in the front. It seemed to be tied in the back and fit her, what Peggy though of as, shockingly well. Peggy wondered if Angie noticed, as she was turned slightly aside and looked away from Peggy.

            "I do," Peggy said. Angie took a drink of her martini with her face quite immobile and turned towards the Bay.

            "It's good to see you, Peg," Angie said. She turned to look at Peggy's face now. Peggy smiled faintly, although she found it uncanny to be able to read so little in Angie's face. It held a polished, finished look that seemed almost secretive to Peggy. Peggy noticed how smooth her voice was, as well. She had barely a hint of a New York accent left.

            "You too," Peggy said. Peggy felt a bit shy, actually, she realized. Although she doubted if it showed on the surface.

            "You look good," Angie said. She said it almost like a man would, in one phrase that lifted at the end, but Peggy did not find her tone or the phrase annoying. She watched Angie take another drink of her martini. She was wearing one of Stark's bracelets, Peggy saw.

            "You too," Peggy said with sincerity. "I suppose you didn't wear that to the funeral."  

            "No," Angie said as she finished her drink and put the glass aside. She turned towards the rail to look out over the water. "It's a Phil Astrano." She glanced mildly at Peggy. "It's for the press." She gave a mild shrug. Angie stood in silence a moment and looked over at her finished her drink once.

            Peggy thought perhaps the joke caught her the wrong way, and thought she ought not to pick up joking as if they had just left off. Peggy hadn't meant to suggest any irreverence on her part for the funeral, and perhaps Angie took it that way.

            "I meant it's lovely on you," Peggy said.

            "Thanks," Angie said. She seemed more distracted to Peggy than upset. She wondered how busy she had been during the trip. Angie took a cigarette out of a case in her purse. She offered one, almost as an afterthought, to Peggy. Peggy shook her head mildly.

            "I never did start," Peggy said.

            "Got to keep up with the morning routine," Angie said as she lit her cigarette and took the first drag to get it going. She smiled for the first time in a way that seemed to reach her eyes at Peggy. "I never thought I'd take it up." Peggy noticed, without meaning to, how delicately she held the cigarette between her lips. Such that it looked almost liable to fall suddenly. And yet it bounced confidently as she spoke.

            "High society wore you down?" Peggy joked. Angie's eyebrow lifted in cynicism.

            "High, low, depends on how you look at it," she said. "Keeps you skinny. That's all that matters, turns out, once you get to where you will never again find yourself unable to buy food. You swap out hungers, I guess." She shrugged again at her own joke.

            She turned back towards the Bay again. Somehow her joking manner did not seem light anymore to Peggy, not like it used to be. Peggy thought she looked unhappy. And it hurt her feelings mildly, given that she herself was here. It felt like her presence did not matter in some way, certainly not as it used to weigh in the scale of things. Angie was here for a funeral and not for her, Peggy reminded herself. She felt her aggravated pride lessen. She put her arms on the railing and looked out herself. It had been a very long time.

            "Have you seen much press in New York?" Peggy said.

            "A little bit," Angie said. "There'll be a frenzy tonight. I'm going out with Howard just before I head to the airport."

            "Oh, yes," Peggy said. "I hear the two of you make plenty of headlines. Are the two of you an item now?" Peggy would have been shocked beyond belief if Angie had said yes.

Angie gave the most dismissive, single huff of laughter imaginable. She glanced at Peggy with her eyebrow barely held aloft. She turned back out towards the water before she spoke.

            "Yeah," Angie said. "Me and Howard." She swallowed and took a drag from her cigarette. She did not look back at Peggy, and she spoke in a tone of very mild confession. "I did have some flings and whatnot." She glanced at Peggy again as she added, "Mostly women but a couple of men."

            Peggy felt her heart flicker despite herself at the mention of Angie's real love affairs like a candle flame threatened by a sudden movement of air. She recovered herself in only a fraction of a second. Peggy noticed Angie turn to lean her back against the rail, and she noted how casual of a maneuver it made. She did it so that she could see Peggy's face. She concealed the gesture, as well, as she never would have in the past. She seemed changed to Peggy.

            "All that media stuff is just hype," Angie said. Peggy saw her eyes narrow in thought a moment. "You know about Howard, about him covering up for other people?" she asked in a veiled tone. Peggy looked at her curiously, and Angie could see she did not know. There was only a moment's pause, as if Angie were remembering who Peggy was before she decided to speak. "Some of those love affairs with women actually cover up their love affairs with other women. He does it for me, and he does it for a much larger handful of women than you'd think. Anytime the heat gets turned up, he makes a show to paint it over and spark a media frenzy." Peggy gave a pensive sort of huff of incredulity at that.

            "Who knew," Peggy said. "I suppose that is one good use he can make of himself."

            "Works like a charm," Angie said. "People would think it strange if I didn't have a recurring fling like that for them to talk about. It's a classic will they, won't they. You got to give the people what they want." Angie said this last line in a deadened tone, as she brought the cigarette to her lips and stalled it a moment with the vaguest flourish before taking another drag. Peggy found it hard not to notice her lips and looked out at the water.

            "So have you found anything steady?" Peggy asked. She wished a moment she had not asked. Then she wished that her own voice had sounded more confident as she had spoken just then. She felt not entirely certain what she was revealing. Angie watched Peggy from the side for a moment, then she looked over her shoulder and out over the water and tapped ash off her cigarette. She shook her head quickly in a deeply dismissive way.

            "Nothin' to compare to you, Peg," Angie said. "They don't make such a thing."

            The flirtation came out easily enough. Yet there seemed to be quite a weight underneath it. Peggy read the subtlest signs of the gravity of Angie's body language. Peggy felt as if she were just beginning to remap all that lay beneath. A long silence passed, as Angie looked out over the water, as if she had quite forgotten Peg and grown lost in her own thoughts. It was a ruse, all this nonchalance, Peggy had just begun to feel. Perhaps she thought Peggy had forgotten her as a product of her marriage.

            "Sometimes I think back on those two years," Peggy said.

            "Oh, yeah?" Angie said. She turned to Peggy and was openly curious.

            "Of course," Peggy said. She met Angie's gaze for just a moment. Angie watched her closely and seemed less guarded now. Peggy thought she was right that Angie imagined she had been forgotten somehow. "In some ways, I feel they were the happiest of my life." Peggy gave Angie a more open look, and Angie read it for a long moment before deciding to respond. Angie's eyes shifted off of Peggy's as she smiled in a soft way.

            "You still sweet on me, English, after all I put you through?" Angie said casually. She looked back out towards the bay, but then she held the rail and shifted over to bump into Peggy. Peggy laughed just slightly. Angie turned with a very gentle and playful smile, still leaning over her arms and onto the rail.

            "Always, it would seem," Peggy said. Her voice held more gravity than she would have thought. She felt herself swallow. She realized after a moment that Angie was still looking up at her face.

            Angie worked her lips and stood up again. Peggy felt her heart rise up in a rush of both panic and exhilaration, as she intuited what was about to happen. Angie moved in close to her and pressed her lips softly against Peggy's once.

            Peggy got a faint taste of martini and very fine tobacco from the touch of Angie's lips. She thought it the taste of a sharp, corrosive, expensive life that Peggy would never want. She took Angie gently by the arms and held her.  

            "I'm a married woman now," Peggy heard herself say. She swallowed again. Then she leaned back a bit to look at Angie's face.   

            Angie looked over Peggy's face and studied her closely. Angie looked more like herself to Peggy now, somehow. The lines around her eyes seemed more pronounced than Peggy remembered. She looked tired and slightly sad but recognizable as herself now. She must have been having a hundred thoughts, but Peggy could not read them. She did not know enough of the context of her life anymore. She did not even know what she was feeling now as she looked at Peggy's face.

            Angie reached then, with a gesture that seemed almost involuntary, to touch Peggy's face. As her fingers moved delicately across the line of Peggy's cheek and jaw, Angie took a deep, slow breath and seemed to derive the most profound pleasure. Peggy remembered in that moment, not just with her mind, but with her whole being, what it was once like between the two of them. Angie was really there, suddenly, on the balcony right in front of her. Angie ran the tips of her fingers across Peggy's lips. Peggy lost any focus she held on anything else. After a moment, she felt that her lips had parted, and Angie's fingers reached in to touch the very tip of her tongue. Peggy felt her own mouth move to meet Angie's, as if drawn by some force of nature. Angie's tongue touched hers in that same place at once.

            She put her hands to the sides of Peggy's neck and pulled her further into this kiss. This time, Angie tasted to Peggy like her own self. There was no way to truly remember a taste, and yet it could never be forgotten either. Despite all that time and distance, there was something in Angie's taste that simply could not change, something deeply innate. And Peggy's whole body and more of her besides became engulfed in a rush of sudden remembering.

            They had drawn each other closer and were kissing deeply, as if no time had passed since they last held one another in this same way. Peggy had the thought, How could this be happening? But it slipped from her mind. There was no room there for it, for anything other than the feel of Angie in her arms. The fine fabric of the dress that slipped across her forearms felt the only strange part of all this.

            Angie dragged Peggy inside, off the balcony. She turned at once and put her arms around Peggy's neck and kissed her again, hard this time. That feel was so familiar, the precise weight and shape of Angie's arms about her neck, that Peggy felt her own knees grow weak for a moment. The entire gesture had a practiced air to it, the sort that would likely have hurt someone who was not ready for it. Peggy had practically caught her without even a thought.

            Peggy felt disoriented. It seemed as if she did not know what age she was in this moment. Her head swam as if she had been drinking heavily that day. Yet she should be entirely sober. Angie pulled then at her waist, the way she always did when she wanted Peggy, and the thought of sobriety became comic. This was far more than mere inebriation. Peggy felt imbalanced in a way she could never have been brought to merely by drink.

            Some part of Peggy's conscious mind buzzed a warning. It felt like some manic hornet in the back of her mind, right at the far edge of her thoughts. Some small part of her wanted to turn towards it. Instead she stared at Angie who had stepped back. Angie looked very serious, and her eyes moved over Peggy just once.

            "Get this off me, Peg," Angie said touching her dress lightly at the front. Peggy heard that Angie's accent had come back suddenly in this moment. Her real voice, Peggy thought. And that was it for Peggy.

            Peggy paused for a mere instant. Then she grasped the two sides of the v-line of Angie's dress and ripped all the buttons and part of the fabric beneath open. She tugged Angie forward and pulled the wrecked dress off of her. She pulled her undergarments off as she kissed her. Angie tried to hold Peggy's face, whenever her clothes weren't in the way, as they came off.

            As Peggy drew Angie right up against her, she felt lighter somehow to Peggy. She practically picked her up and put her onto the bed. She got one look at Angie's body, and to her mind Angie looked thin and weakened, as if she had been ill. But Angie more or less dragged Peggy over herself, and she held Peggy hard and seemed full of life. She jerked at Peggy's clothes and got them off with a such an urgency, Peggy felt surprised not to hear them rip. Her kisses seemed to want to draw Peggy in as far as she could, and though she was not strong enough to drag Peggy down as she drew again at her waist, her desire felt a far more unavoidable force to Peggy.

            Peggy felt her thigh come between Angie's legs. When they kissed, they seemed to shift involuntarily against one another, as if catching a rhythm their bodies had not even begun to forget over these missing years. Peggy felt sure they were beyond stopping now. She felt a sort of relief or resolve within herself. She rested her forehead just beneath Angie's collarbone a moment, then brought her face back up to kiss her most passionately.

            With the tiny part of her mind that reached for consciousness, Peggy thought for sure that she would regret this. And yet it was like having the thought of air when one has gone underwater. That world seemed incomprehensible somehow, after only a moment of distance. The separation between the two worlds held an infinite quality that could not be bridged.

            Angie gasped against Peggy's lips already. Peggy slowed down only slightly, as she moved against her. The shift was just enough to make the feel of her touch against Angie more intense. Angie gave a series of almost gasping cries as she held onto Peggy. She seemed far quicker and more bold in her response than she had been in the past. And Peggy pressed hard into her, as she entwined Angie's fingers with her own and pressed both her hands into the bed at her sides.

            Angie seemed almost lost in all of this. When she finally came to a bit, she took her hands out from Peggy's and placed them on her hips. She shifted their bodies, and brought them together so that Peggy felt their movements, as well. Peggy grew heavier and shifted down onto her at this. And Angie held her hard and kept her locked within their movement. Both of them had to keep it going, and when they kissed again they felt so close that Peggy did not seem able to understand that Angie had ever been away from her.

            They lasted longer than Peggy would have thought they could this way. As the gasps in Angie's chest developed into small cries of pleasure, Peggy felt her own pleasure rise up with hers in response. They were kissing and tangled in one another, holding each other hard, as if they could draw one another even closer than this, as they built their pleasure to its height. They both grew lost within their movement and were driven over the edge by a shared pleasure at the same time.

            Peggy held Angie close for a moment. She felt Angie then begin to tremble. The response grew until Peggy felt almost worried. She moved back and looked down over Angie's body. She had seen this same sort of quaking arrest Angie before, but never after like this. Angie touched Peggy's face and seemed utterly overwhelmed.

            "Oh, Peg," Angie said. As she spoke, she opened her eyes, which she had held closed tightly before, to see Peggy's face. "God, it's just so sweet with you. How can it be so sweet?"

            She touched Peggy with an almost desperate edge in her touch and looked closely at her. Peggy nearly dropped onto her, and her face felt hid in the pillow above Angie's shoulder. She felt Angie's hands across her shoulder blade and at the back of her neck.

            A weight seemed to have settled onto Peggy's chest, like a heavy stone being set down upon her. She felt her eyes fill with tears, but she lacked the energy to cry. A fear came over her that felt almost cold. Peggy's mind seemed to be reeling, unable to allow this experience to settle into her mind as a current reality. She felt her heart would break again when Angie left the city, today. She felt an almost desperate urge to beg her to stay, though she said nothing. Angie was not the same woman that she used to be, Peggy thought to herself. The life Peggy had with Angie long ago that now was so dramatically evoked seemed to have dragged her completely out of her own current life.

            Peggy's entire life beyond this seemed like a fog she could not see into. She tried to think and gain mastery of herself now. Peggy felt a greater fear now that seemed to move like the lines in breaking glass through her body at a level deep as bone that when the fog lifted, she would find herself standing in the midst of utter ruin. Angie would be gone within hours, Peggy realized. The thought seemed to hold a meaning she could not decipher.

            Angie drew Peggy's face up and looked over it. The expression Angie saw was one of absolute regret. Angie merely kept on watching for a moment, and for the first time that day, Peggy saw Angie focus more on Peggy's feelings than her own. She looked stunned for just an instant – shocked, in fact. Then she put her face against Peggy's shoulder and burst into tears.

 

            Peggy merely held Angie as she wept.

            "Don't cry, darling," was all Peggy could manage after a time. Angie sat up with Peggy on the bed. Her eyes moved over Peggy's body, and Peggy felt self-conscious for the first time about how her own body might seem changed since she'd had children. This thought seemed too jarring for her mind to really confront. But Angie touched Peggy with a sort of reverence, as if she found her so precious that she feared to damage her with even the lightest touch.

            Angie climbed out of the bed and poured herself a drink of water. Peggy saw that her hands were shaking. Peggy stood up and looked at her own clothes on the bed amidst the now disturbed bedding, a strange sort of vision in that moment, then back to Angie.

            "You look positively ravaged," Peggy said. There was little expression in her tone, and the phrase held a note almost of despair. Her hand came to Angie's shoulder, and she felt her fingertips move over the red marks. At least Angie felt real to her touch. Nothing else felt quite real to Peggy in that moment.

            Angie had not taken quite the same mood, and she stepped into Peg. She still had energy, and she seemed to have a subdued edge of panic in her movements. She kissed Peggy gently now, all the desire and romance gone from the kiss. She put her arms around Peggy's neck and held her for a long moment. She stood back to look at Peggy's face. She looked like she could cry again.

            "I'm so sorry, love," Angie said. She held Peggy's hand for a moment.

            Peggy stared at their hands, seeing but uncomprehending in a way. Peggy got dressed quickly. Peggy came to a bit more and felt somewhat resolved. What was done was done, she thought heavily. She had made her choice and would have to sort it out afterwards.

            She touched Angie's face now, touched her mouth and tried to focus such that she could later remember the feel, although one never really could, she knew. She kissed her again once and rested her head upon Angie's shoulder, as if in defeat.

            "I have to go, darling," Peggy said. Angie just held her for a long moment. As Peggy stood back, she saw the ruined masterpiece of a dress Angie had been wearing when she came. "Oh, your dress," Peggy heard her own voice say in a tone of worry and regret. Angie's eyes were large and full of what looked like fear and sadness, Peggy could see.

            "I'll buy another," Angie said without an ounce of feeling. She touched Peggy once more, held her shoulder and put the other hand to her chest. Peggy felt herself almost sway against the touch so near her heart. She practically stumbled out the door, and Angie drew it closed behind her.

            Peggy felt an urge to turn back and open it. The hall before her felt almost like a nightmare. Peggy put her hand to the wall then to her own temple and tried to regain some semblance of sanity as she made her way out down the hall.


	2. Get To The Nearest Water

            Peggy's body seemed to set a straight path home without her having a thought, as if a homing beacon were set to draw her out of dangerous waters. She could hardly decipher the subway map and hailed herself a taxi as if driven by instinct. She must have been visibly distraught to some degree. The driver looked at her a bit worried in the rearview. He did not say anything on their way. He drove with the window down and a cigarette held carefully at the corner of the window. All the ash and smoke went straight out with the air currents. It was a practiced art, and Peggy watched it without feeling as they drove.

            When the arrived in front of her house, Peggy clambered out with the vaguest sense of relief. As she stood at the window and paid the driver, she realized she had no idea of the time. She asked him, and he told her a quarter past three. He took his pay with a brief exchange of thanks and drove away. Peggy thought about the time. Steven and Lynn were not home yet from school. Daniel would be. She registered that she thought this was good, but she could not feel anything else distinct. She opened the door and came into the kitchen and just stood then, barely inside the house. It seemed that her legs had forgotten how to carry her across the room and on in, as if she had no idea where to go next in her own home. She observed how she just stood there as if she were suddenly unable to move.

            "How'd it go?" Daniel said as he popped his head around the corner and entered the kitchen. He had been waiting a moment for Peggy and come to find her when she did not come into the living room. He looked surprised at the sight of her, and Peggy saw his smile drop. He looked terribly concerned in all of an instant.

            Peggy tried, as Daniel crossed the room, to form the words on her lips. She wanted to look him in the face and say what had happened. She could do that now at least and salvage some thread of her own integrity. Peggy trusted herself to have that kind of courage. Her chest felt frozen, however, and she could get no air with which to speak. She looked at his face with a plan to say something, but no words would come out of her mouth.

            "I…" was all she got out. She recognized herself to be in some form of shock. Daniel had drawn near and was looking closely over her expression to read everything he could find there. By his own expression, Peggy watched as he guessed his way through much of what had happened. Daniel put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed it gently. He continued to look close at her face, as if trying to read more deeply. He looked somewhat surprised and much more worried. He tried to smile, she thought, in order to calm her down.

            "I'm just glad you came back," he said and gave her a sort of tiny shake. He gave her a warm smile then. Peggy felt truly overwhelmed, as a wave of relief along with a sort of guilt and a profound and indistinct heat that she could not even begin to name all welled up and seemed they might pour out everywhere and prove enough to fill the room after having drowned her from within. Peggy put her face in her hands.

            With a soft, "Come 'n," Daniel pulled Peggy into a hug. He was trying to soothe her, as strange as that felt to Peggy. He rubbed her shoulder and back. She held him in return. The shape of his body seemed to carry a quality of the real and familiar, and Peggy held onto him. "I love you, Peg," he said. The lightness of his tone, as if he were reminding her of an everyday fact, made her heart feel like it might break. He was not taking this in whatever way she had imagined in her rather unformed terror.

            "And I love you," Peggy managed. He held her back to see her face. Peggy felt how entirely true her words were. Those were not the truth that she should have spoken, she thought. Yet they were true. She felt confused. She felt also deeply relieved, however, so much that it pushed back some of her guilt. Daniel seemed quite subdued still.

            "It's alright with me if you love Angie, too," he said. His tone was light. He meant it as a comfort and as just the slightest tease. He meant to lighten the mood. There was not even a hint of malice in the expression on his face, even though Peggy knew that she looked for it reflexively now.

            Peggy tried to take in his real demeanor and his comment, meant as a joke. Instead, she began, in absolute earnest, to weep. The sobs came over her as if she had found someone she loved dead, and knew that there was nothing that she could now do. She held her face in her hands and wept at the mercy of her own feelings.

            "Aw, Peg," Daniel said, and he took her into a fuller embrace. Peggy could not stop weeping, and Daniel didn't try to get her to stop. Peggy gave up the search for something she might say to him. Peggy had no distinct thoughts, just an unbearable weight of sudden grief that overcame everything else. Peggy felt Daniel's body shift after a while.

            "I see the kids coming," he said. Peggy stood up straight and drew in her breath. She did not have herself together at all. "Let me get 'em something," he said. He meant the form of afternoon tea they had after school. They usually both sat with them right after they came home from school and heard about their day, as the children drank cocoa while Peggy and Daniel had a cup of tea or coffee, and they all ate something light. Peggy could not fake any degree of poise at the moment. She felt she would only distress them. Daniel's sister, Christina, would be coming in a couple of hours to pick them up for the evening. "You go on upstairs," Daniel said. His tone was a questioning one, and Peggy nodded. Daniel gave her one last hug that felt like a gesture of absolute solidarity, before she would go off alone. "I'll be up," he said after her, and it felt a promise and comfort.

            Peggy sat on the bed astonished by both her marriage and by her own incredibly frailty. What had happened to her? She felt perhaps that she had lost her mind temporarily. The idea felt both alarming and also uncanny.  Peggy had been through extremes of psychic stress before and proven her own resilience. Had she lost control of herself completely today? She felt a perplexed now even by her fear on the way home. She did not doubt the strength of her marriage. Why had she become so dreadfully lost, almost paralyzed it seemed in terror?

            Peggy felt as if she had experience an earthquake within, as if her own inner world had suffered what a disturbance and left her to calculate its measure. Suddenly everything felt upturned and sharp edges broke through the usual landscape and distorted everything. She could not move about what was once familiar to her without risking falling and being further harmed.

            Peggy sat and stared at the window until she realized the sun seemed to hurt her eyes or perhaps her brain. Then she moved to the chair, so that her back was turned to the window. She could not help but remember how many times she and Daniel had made love in this chair, as she almost never sat in it otherwise. She held her face in her hands with her eyes closed against all the light in the room.

            The faint sounds of Daniel and Lynn and Steven's voices floated up through the stairwell and the closed door. They were happy and common sounds, and they seemed almost like the sound of rain or the ocean that would wash over Peggy and calm her no matter how she felt otherwise. The time passed, and Peggy sat without much thought, though her body occasionally seemed to flare with the energy of her encounter with Angie and her mind to draw out a precise memory of that encounter. She felt like her mind was trying to piece it together and get it to fit in her own mind now with her in her own life.

            What the hell had happened to her? Peggy wondered finally. She had taken her face from her hands. The children had gone, she knew, as she heard the front door. There was a pause of silence afterwards. Peggy heard Daniel say something, though she was not sure to whom. Within moments, she heard Daniel come up the stairs. He came right in after he opened the door. He moved with a confident sense of purpose.

            "I called in, "Daniel said. He meant work, as she usually worked late into the evenings every Wednesday. "Come on, girl. We both need the water," he said, "And we can't get out to the bay and back by eight." Daniel would have taken them to the ocean if he could have. That was his instinct in all situations involving dismay. He was going to lead her into the bathroom. A bath was the next best thing. He ducked in and started the water and came back for her.

            As Peggy undressed, she felt a sudden and deep fear of revealing her own body. She felt it would be covered somehow with the signs of her love making with Angie. She actually turned and looked in the mirror at this deeply irrational thought. There were faint marks on the curve of her shoulder, but otherwise only her face spoke of the experience and mirrored the desperation she felt. She turned back to Daniel, who was perched on the edge of the tub.

            Their habits seemed to take over for a moment, as they settled in to the water with Peggy leaning her back into Daniel's chest. He wrapped his arms around her, as he would have any other day. They both were silent for a long time. Daniel was right, and the water did seem to help, as uncanny as it seemed. She leaned forward to turn off the water at one point and leaned back again. She felt Daniel sigh deeply. He held onto her as if he felt that she had been threatened somehow. Maybe she had. Peggy felt no language was available to her to describe what had happened.

            After a while, Peggy moved herself around. She sat facing Daniel now. They were quiet for a while. Daniel leaned forward and sort of wrapped his arms around Peggy's knees. He put his chin on one of them. He looked very young and very sweet in this posture. Peggy felt an urge to touch his face, but she was still strangely frozen it would seem and outside herself in some way.

            "Do you want to tell me what actually happened?" he said. Peggy looked at him and felt now her shock and fear surface in her expression. He kept looking at her, as if waiting. "You just slept with Angie?" he said as if to lead her on, "Or was it messier than that?" His tone on the first question was surprisingly light to Peggy, and his tone on the second question seemed far more grave. He was really worried. _Just,_ Peggy thought over his words again, as her eyes lost focus on his face and fell to the line of water's surface. "Peggy, don't cry," Daniel said preemptively. She felt then her eyes had welled up with tears. She gave a sort of strained, single laugh instead of weeping. He ran his hands over her knees, as if to comfort her. He gave an empathetic smile, as if trying to get her to consider mimicking it that reminded her of when one of the kids was hurt. Peggy could not help but smile.  

            "Trying to trick me into a grin?" Peggy said.

            "Of course," he said. He smiled more fully. He seemed to be taking this all very lightly. She looked up at him and grew herself very serious.

            "I had no idea that was going to happen when I went," Peggy said. She shook her head. She felt that her own brows were furrowed. She ran her hand over her forehead then her eyes. She felt more herself, suddenly, than she had all day. Daniel seemed to notice at once and to become slightly relieved. He sat up a bit more.

            "Do you think she did?" he asked.

            "What do you mean?" Peggy asked.

            "I mean, Angie. Was she trying to start things up again? You didn't seem to think so last night," he said. Peggy felt the confusion in her own face. She hadn't really considered this yet, and she had no answer. Daniel just rubbed her legs. "I don't mean to pry," he said.

            Peggy looked up at him at this. She felt more herself and more grounded in their relationship now. She felt as if her mind was clearing finally. She felt a distinct guilt much more rooted in herself now that did not seem all encompassing.

            "I am so sorry, love," Peggy said in a steady tone now. She put her hands on his. He looked down at her hands a moment then ran his over hers in response. Then he looked back up at her. Peggy saw him bite his lip in thought and basically gave a shrug.

            "Honestly, Peg, I'm finding it hard to feel like I've personally been done a real harm here. I think you're the one who's taking this on the chin. I got more like a glancing blow to the chest. I've never seen you like this before, Peg," he said. He touched her as he said this as if she were made of glass and might break.

            "Are you not shocked?" Peggy asked.

            "I am surprised, yeah, obviously. I mean, it's not like I didn't think of it for a second. I guess I thought you would say something before. I'm more 'shocked' to see you all broke up like this," he said. "You look like someone died, Peggy. Much worse than when people _have_ died." Peggy took a deep breath and ran her hand over her face. She did not fully comprehend her own response to all this. She wanted to make sure, however, that Daniel was not entirely written out of it.

            "Are you certain you're not angry, darling?" Peggy said. "You can be angry even if I am weeping." Daniel seemed to really think for a moment and shook his head.

            "No, I'm not angry," he said. "I don't want to give you the wrong impression."

            "What would that be?" Peggy asked.

            "Like I don’t take you seriously," he said. "I am concerned. You've got my full attention. But this seems really sudden. You look surprised – in shock almost. If I thought you planned this or that this meant you were unhappy or going to leave, then I'd be much more upset. You seem way more unhappy now than you were before you left. I don't get the impression that this is the start of you leaving me."

            Peggy gave a sort of sarcastic huff of laughter at this. Peggy thought it almost funny that she had slept with someone else, quite out of the blue, and Daniel was mainly concerned about her leaving him. She took a deep breath and ran her hands over her face once more. Her marriage was as stable as she had always known it to be, and somehow she had become so disoriented today that she had forgotten. That had been part of it. She thought for a moment. This was not entirely out of the blue, she realized, as she tried to be more fair-minded about it all.

            "I am not at all unhappy," Peggy said, meaning about her life. She shook her head. "I did not know this was all so unresolved between us." She meant Angie. The thought of saying Angie's name made her feel she might weep again. "It's like an old life just found me out and brought me back. It disrupted everything for a moment. I couldn't even think my way through it all. I believe this is the most rash action I have ever taken."

            Daniel gave a sort of chuckle after a minute. Peggy looked up at him. He gave a mild shrug as he spoke.

            "Well, your not the least impulsive person in the world, Peg," Daniel said mildly, as if almost an apology. He knew she would not like this. "Or the least passionate on top of that," he added.

            Peggy had felt herself blush and did want to argue. Daniel sat knowing she felt that way, and he clearly thought it funny. He refrained from teasing her in this moment. She wasn't in much of a position to win the argument and that would not make for fair sport. "How many times have you sucker punched someone?" he asked. He found a soft way to win his point.

            "It is much easier to decide to punch someone than to kiss someone in all of an instant," Peggy said. Even in the moment she realized this was a somewhat irrational argument.

            "Prob'ly depends on who you are," Daniel said with all fairness. "Maybe you just got overwhelmed, Peggy," he said as if to bolster her. Peggy shook her head. "You look like your pride is hurt," Daniel said. His tone gave away that he thought this funny. Peggy felt nearly as astonished by Daniel in this moment, as she was with herself. She felt herself laughing. She was still shaking her head.

            "It is," she admitted.

            "Guess you found your weakness," Daniel said.

            "What sex? That seems rather unoriginal," Peggy said. She felt her eyes well up with tears at this. Daniel took it as a joke but also as serious, she could see from his face.

            "No, Peg," he said. "Angie. Did she play you? You don't really seem sure. Or else you're not wanting to talk about it." Peggy thought about this for a moment and, in sheer surprise, realized that she was not certain either way.

            "I am not sure what happened," she admitted.

            "You had your guard way down," Daniel said at this. He seemed to be thinking in silence for a long moment and surprised Peggy when he spoke again. "You must really love this woman," he said. Peggy though it funny that he said _love_ instead of _trust_. She realized that he had gone straight from the one and on to the other. He ran his hands over Peggy's knees again once as he said this, and the gesture added a sort of intimacy and authority to what he had said. Peggy felt that look of fear and shock come back into her face a moment, as she considered Daniel's deduction. His tone gave away that he was rather astonished, that he did not really understand this before.

            Peggy felt that she was crying again, then, though it was not so broken or painful now. She had not known this either. But she felt now that what he said was irrevocably true. She did not fully understand why it felt so present or tragic now all of a sudden. Yesterday it was fine. Angie lived in LA, far away from life in New York and Peggy. This was now. Angie showed up, and it destroyed her calm. She must have built up some kind of felt sense of distance from it all. Now she had lost it. Her own emotions were bowling her over today, tumbling out of the past as if they had never changed. She had never felt this overwhelmed before, at least not in this way or anything akin to it. Clearly something had gone wrong with how she and Angie parted ways, as if felt now as if they never had.

            Daniel seemed also to be concentrating hard on something very important, as Peggy ran through all these thoughts. He spoke again, suddenly, as if picking up a thread from before. "Although she is kind of famous now, so maybe you still don't score high on being original. I mean, you are also a woman, so, distinct maybe, but not original." Peggy was caught off her guard and laughed fully at his joke despite herself.

            When Peggy looked across the water at Daniel's face, she saw how pleased he was that he got her with his joke. She then felt that she had really returned to her life. Daniel must have felt it, too, because he seemed finally to have relaxed. His face no longer held that edge of worry for her. Peggy still felt rather astonished, as if she had experienced an unfathomable catastrophe and now sat experiencing a casual miracle.

 

            Peggy felt herself back in her own life before dinner. Steven and Lynn came home from Christina's. Daniel cooked that night, while Peggy sat the kitchen table nearby and worked through some of their homework with them. They did not have very much to do tonight, so they would all have some time after dinner. Peggy thought about what they might do with the open time.

            The phone rang just as they were sat down and about to eat. Daniel was pouring sauce over Lynn's plate. Peggy got up to go and answer it. Howard Stark greeted Peggy with his usual bravado as he recognized her voice. Peggy made him a surprised hello, already wondering why on earth he was calling.  

            "What are you doing tonight? Can the husband spare you?" he asked cavalierly. Peggy felt herself almost bristle like a dog on watch. He was always so leading with everyone.

            "Why?" she said.

            "I'm going out dancing with your friend Angie. Her flight got moved to late. I thought I'd send a car around to get you."

            "What are you playing at?" Peggy said. Her voice sounded far more of a growl and a provocation than she had imagined it would. Howard's tone changed at once.

            "Nothing, Peg," he said. There was a small pause that felt a miracle given that she was talking to Howard. "Is there something I don't know about?" he asked.

            Peggy felt her fingers press into her brow. She almost felt a headache in response to her anger. She tried to get a handle on it.  

            "Did you ask Angie about all this?" Peggy asked him.

            "No, I didn't think," he said. He was quiet another moment. "I'll back off." There was a long silence while he waited for her to talk. "Sorry, Peggy," he said. He made a few lighter remarks then hung up of his own accord.

            Peggy stood up straight and felt her body rigid and tensed, as if for a fight. She forced herself to take a deep breath to steady herself. When Peggy came back into the kitchen, everyone was staring at her. They had all heard her voice as she had started to lose her temper.

            "Who was it?" Daniel asked in mild concern.

            "Howard Stark," she said.

            "Oh," Daniel said. He relaxed immediately and took a bite off his plate. Lynn and Steven responded to that by relaxing, as well. Peggy came and sat down again.

            "He's a misogynist," Lynn said. Daniel looked up with a vague guilt at Peggy across the table. She obviously had not learned the word at school. Peggy turned to her.  

            "What does that mean, Lynn darling?" Peggy asked her.

            "He hates women and doesn't treat them right," Lynn said as she got noodles onto her fork.

            "What's the opposite of that?" Steven asked them. That was how Stephen understood things by asking after their opposite. He picked it up somewhere, probably from how Peggy explained things to him.

            "Dad," Lynn said. Daniel gave a sort of wry smirk at Peggy. She did not really have an argument.

            "No, the word," Steven asked to clarify.

            "A feminist," Daniel said. They were quiet for a moment. Peggy spoke softly, teasing Daniel a bit.

            "I was hoping we might teach them about gender politics when they were at least past ten," Peggy said. Daniel gave a huff that was feigned but dismissive. He gave now a mock look of being totally unapologetic.

            "Someone else will have got to them by then," he said. "Got to start early." Peggy shook her head mildly. All this took the sting out of Howard's call. She slowly shook off the felt sense of upset from their interaction with Howard as they all ate.

 

            Daniel asked her more about the conversation on the phone after they got into bed. Peggy told him about it. He seemed a little distressed.

            "You don't think they're after you, do you?" he asked.

            "What do you mean?" Peggy asked.

            "I guess I mean, is there a conspiracy among the wealthy to steal my wife and move her to Hollywood?" Daniel asked.

            Peggy snorted dismissively. She put her book aside. She still felt a bit angry at Howard, although she thought now that this was a bit unfair. She imagined it was just a mistaken call. He had not spoken to Angie first. What would she have said? Peggy wondered. The idea of it made her chest hurt.

            "I'm sure Angie didn't know," Peggy said. She turned to Daniel. "She seemed very upset as I left." He gave a curious look but would not ask more. "About what happened between us," Peggy added just to clarify.

            "Why do you think?" he asked. He scratched at his cheek and seemed thoughtful.

            "I think she realized that I had lost myself," Peggy said. Daniel looked very interested in this. "That's not what she wanted." Daniel listened closely, Peggy felt. He seemed very thoughtful for a moment. Peggy wondered what he thought.

            "She really loves you?" Daniel asked Peggy suddenly. She found it difficult to answer for a moment. Perhaps she needed a moment to wade through her own doubts and get clarity.

            "She does," Peggy said. She had to wipe her eyes. Daniel was looking closely at Peggy. He seemed very thoughtful still. He also seemed relieved to hear this, which Peggy thought a bit odd.

            "No one can steal me, darling," Peggy teased him.

            "Yeah, I know that," he said with a smirk. "They can make things interesting, though." He raised his eyebrows as if imagining.

            Soon after, Peggy turned off her lamp. Daniel the lamp on his side on and came over onto Peggy's side of the bed. She felt his chest press up against her back. She moved so he could put his arms around her. Peggy found herself surprised for moment. Daniel meant to reach around and put his hand between her legs, as he would every night before they went to sleep, unless he already knew she did not want it. She supposed that the events of the day would have put him off in some way. He seemed quite unaffected. Peggy was the one assuming this pattern had that formed their marriage would have been disrupted.

            When they were first married, Peggy and Daniel had remained home for a week to recover before they went on their three week honeymoon in Europe. Peggy realized at some point that week that while she had presumed they would be making love every day, at least once, after they were married, that Daniel had expected more of what they had been doing, which was making love to each other about twice a week. Peggy remembered how she felt a rush of burning self-consciousness, as he first began to notice this difference, even as she herself did. The difference between them unfurled gradually over that week. Daniel finally addressed it, after he had rolled Peggy over onto the bed. He was starting to draw up her dress and was about to lean down, she could tell, to bring his mouth between her legs. They were going to bed just for her, she realized. He looked up and saw the look on her face and read the anxiety it held accurately.

            "Don't hide anything," he said with a gesture of his hand across her low stomach. "I want it all." She saw his jaw grip after he spoke. Desire was more complicated than Peggy had given it credit in their relationship.

            Peggy felt much the same strain between an urge to hide and reveal herself in bed with Daniel now. She felt an urge to conceal from him the almost desperate desire to be made love to that she felt rise up in her body. She did not really imagine, though, that she could hide. Daniel knew her too well, and he was right here with his arms about her. She could say something, however, and he would move away. He would not ask her to explain, she knew. She felt it strange to be considering asking him not to touch her, when she knew that was not what she wanted at all. She turned over her shoulder and kissed him instead. She brought her hand up and around to draw him into it . She felt herself groan just slightly when he touched her, and Daniel pulled her closer and held her harder at once. He felt the presence of desire in her body immediately.

            He touched her almost hard, and she felt her back arch. She gripped his arm across her chest with both hands and felt herself almost shake at the feel of his touch. Daniel came up slightly to look down at Peggy. He moved his other hand, as she helped him, to open the buttons on the gown she wore and then held one of her breasts. He touched her as hard as he dared starting out, as he sought to find out just how much she could take this suddenly. The answer surprised even herself, as she reached around to draw his hip close and bring him closer against her body and heard herself moan with the deepest pleasure.

            Peggy needed only a short time before she built up and grew lost in pleasure. The peak of it dragged on and on, until Peggy felt herself shuddering. As she came down, she felt how tense her body still was. She was barely getting started compared with what her body could do, she knew. Peggy felt a bit astonished at this, given how tired her mind felt. And she felt a rush of confused feeling about all of this and especially a worry for Daniel.

            She turned over to see him, just as he urged to do just that. He was fine. His eyes moved over her body briefly and came back to her face. He could see how far from satisfied she was, and the intensity of her response had got him going, as well, as if would have any other time. He pulled off his boxers and drew Peggy's gown up more. He brought their bodies together at once, knowing that she would find it easy. They both worked her gown up over the rest of her body in order to get it off, as they kissed. Daniel put it beside them on the bed.

            Peggy drew Daniel into her arms now. As he moved with her, she felt almost maddened by it. They were practiced lovers, and they both moved in order to find a place that sent pleasure up Peggy's spine with a force that made her tremble and moan down in her chest. She kissed Daniel deeply and held him hard. His own desire had been provoked by the felt intensity of her own, and he held hard to her and pulled her against him. He brought his hand between them to touch her breasts, at first. And when he could will himself to move away from their kissing, he bent down to kiss her breasts.

            Peggy heard herself crying out at the feel of this. She tried to be quiet enough that her voice would not carry across the house. Daniel did not seem to even think of it, for he pressed into her hard and merely drove her onwards. Peggy came to a climax again, as Daniel worked her breasts, careful though he grew nearly rough with intensity, as she could tolerate it all in this state. She lay back and drew in her breath and pulled at his hips a moment after her body calmed just a bit.

            When she caught her breath, she took him by the arms and led him to roll over so that she could come overtop of him. Peggy controlled their movements now. She had her hands braced on Daniel's stomach, which he held tense as he moved along with her. She lost all thought and sense of time, as they shifted into each other. Peggy felt how he watched her, as she moved. She finally managed to keep her eyes open long enough to watch him in return.

            When she felt from the way he moved his body that he was building to a climax, Daniel's hands came back to Peggy's breasts. She could barely tolerate the sensation now. He held one breast in his hand and reached between her legs to touch her. He was trying to orchestrate them finishing at the same time. Peggy sat up straight to gain her balance and put her hands over his to help him. She felt her back bow, and she heard herself moan again, barely able to withstand the feeling of this final rush of pleasure. That Daniel groaned and moved along with her, and she felt a rush as he became overcome gave it all the more intensity. Peggy felt almost faint as she regained her balance for a moment.

            She tried to catch her breath. As she opened her eyes, she felt more conscious of the room and the house about them. She had a thought to worry about the noise and whether they might have woken one of the children. Daniel must have read this in her body language.

            "They're all right, I think," Daniel said in a quieted voice. "We weren't all that loud." He had his hands on her hips still.

            He lay back against the pillow a moment and just looked up at her. Peggy rubbed her face with her hands, as she tried to regain herself. She felt her hands shaking as she put them on Daniel's stomach again. Daniel ran his hands over her body, her thighs, her sides, her arms, with a slow and steady pressure. He could still feel, she knew, the threads of pleasure running through her body. She had not been like this that she could remember for a long time. And there was a desperation to all of this, a quality of the intensity that almost made her want to weep.

            This did not seem connected directly to Angie, but it was all mixed up. Peggy felt herself stilled by the memory of Angie when it came now. She looked down at Daniel, who lay with his eyes heavy as he gazed over her above him. He must have seen it in her face, Peggy thought, when his eyes met her own. He swallowed, and he shifted and took her by the hand. He drew her down into an embrace.

            Daniel turned them onto their sides, and slowly led them to part from each other. Peggy felt a rush in her chest almost of panic at having their love making come to an end, as if she would have them go on forever. Her body felt exhausted and trembled still a bit. Daniel drew her in close and kissed her deeply and put his arms about her. They went on kissing for so long that Peggy's anxiety grew lost.

            They were up late, she knew. Peggy felt glad for the fact that it was not a work day for Daniel in the morning. He would sleep in late, as he did every Saturday morning, and come down to be with the children just as she left at twenty to ten. She would wake up at 5 a.m. regardless. The children tended to wake around seven or seven thirty. Peggy had a short day of work at the women's union. She did not worry about being tired, as the work carried her on its own energy.

            The two of them kept on kissing until they grew so tired that the movements of their kissing were barely perceptible. Peggy wondered if their lips would be roughed from all this tomorrow. When they finally stopped kissing, they lay close, still facing one another with their arms somewhat tangled. They were not in their customary position, and yet they both fell quickly to sleep.

****

            Peggy felt grateful for work the next day. It was difficult not to think about Angie, not to remember small things she had not considered in such a long while, while she was still at home that morning with Steven and Lynn. At work, she forgot everything but her purpose. Susan, Veronica, Mags, Sarah, Angie, and all the other women at work were crafting a new platform. They were trying to figure out their strategic plan for the coming year. Peggy always took somewhat of a lead at this time of year, as they mapped out their plans. She was in her element with this kind of work.

            On the way home, as she thought over her day at work, Peggy remembered the time when Angie had asked her what she wanted. That must have been ten years ago. "A squadron," Peggy had said. She thought it a joke then. She had one now. She never would have sought out these women or this work if it weren't for Angie. She felt Angie's presence now, as if were emerging from the background, in her everyday life. She was all about Peggy still it felt, just hard to see now, sort of faded into the backdrop.

            When she got home, Peggy said hello and kissed everyone and set herself to a little more work. A bit later, she came into the kitchen. She looked out the window just she saw Christina leading Steven and Lynn down the sidewalk. They were telling her some story together, Peggy could see. This was not within their usual routine. Daniel came into the kitchen, as he must have noticed that Peggy had finished her work.

            "Hey," he said.

            "You sent the kids off," Peggy said with a sort of curious tone.

            "Yeah, just until dinner," he said.

            Peggy leaned against the counter. Daniel came and put his hand to her arm. She waited for him to say something. He leaned in and kissed Peggy on the neck and lingered there. She almost felt the hair rise on her neck, his touch was so affecting. Her hand came to his jaw as a reflex. She could not shake this feeling like a sort of electricity humming beneath her skin, since yesterday. The slightest touch from Daniel provoked it, at once. She felt he had sensed that it would. He moved his face alongside hers, and let their lips pass without a kiss.

            "I thought I'd take you back to bed," Daniel said frankly. Peggy looked over his expression with one of her eyebrows raised. He smiled and looked a bit shy. Although he clearly meant to seduce her. He had his hand resting on the counter beside and behind her to keep his balance. He put his other hand on her hip a moment. Peggy felt her jaw tense from the feel of it. Peggy looked over his expression once more, almost disbelieving that he was serious.

            She saw him looking over her face, as well, waiting for her response. He swallowed and gave a sort of look that indicated he was wondering if he guessed how Peggy would feel rightly. Peggy had a thought to wonder whether she had ever said no to one of his offers. Regardless of that, she was not about to say no to him now. She gave him a look, and he stood back and turned to go out of the room.

            Peggy followed him up the stairs. She felt that she almost stumbled after him, as if in a trance. She already felt heavy when, now in their room, he stepped behind her and pulled her against himself. He kissed her neck, as he started to remove her clothes. Peggy turned into him, and they undressed one another.

            Peggy felt slightly unbalanced. She stood back and ran her fingers over her lips a moment, after she found herself wanting to rip open the buttons on Daniel's coat and shirt. She felt a little stunned by the severity of her own desire. Daniel could feel and see it just by being near her. He undressed himself as quickly as he could manage it.

            He pulled Peggy right up against him and kissed her deeply, over and over again. The way he kept his arms wrapped around her and their bodies pressed together helped to steady Peggy. She held him in return and felt less maddened with her own desire, as if already somewhat satisfied. They seemed to struggle to let go of one another long enough to climb into the bed together.

            Peggy touched Daniel's body in the full daylight. His body always felt beautiful to Peggy if there were a word that meant the same thing for a man's body. She never could put it into words, so she did not try. She felt it conveyed enough in how she touched him. She felt the lines of him all distinctly, as she looked over him.

            Daniel pushed all their pillows against the wall, and Peggy knew what he had in mind. She sat up and turned, as he sat himself up against them. She felt his hands take hold of her, as he drew her into his lap. Their bodies settled in easily to this familiar position. Daniel wrapped his arms around Peggy, as she leaned back into him. They moved together, both taking it up very slowly. He settled one hand between Peggy's legs, and put his other arm across her both her breasts. Peggy closed her eyes for a long moment and thought of absolutely nothing. She merely felt Daniel's touch across her body, as he reached so much of her at once.

            Peggy found that her own pleasure tipped over easily into that first wave of complete engulfment. She felt even more responsive than she had been yesterday. Apparently, all she needed then to recover was sleep. They kept on with Daniel trying, as Peggy could tell, to stay with this as long as he could. He brought Peggy up into an extreme of pleasure twice, before he finally gave in himself. Peggy sat holding onto him, behind her.

            Daniel could tell just from the feel of her that Peggy could go on and come to another height, yet again. So he led her to lay down beside him now. He situated himself beside her and touched her with his hand, as he looked down and over the length of her body. She felt herself grow overwhelmed, quite suddenly. She did not know if she could go on even though her body still wanted this.

            She lay too still, and Daniel felt it immediately. He turned back to look closely at her face. He looked over her body once and then back again. He was trying to read her and decipher her mood, she knew.

            "Are you shy?" Daniel asked her. Peggy heard how astounded he was in his tone of voice. His voice showed he thought this would be simply uncanny. She felt that was a name, more or less, for how she felt just now.

            "I might be," Peggy said honestly. She felt her voice came out somewhat weak. The slightest smile came across Daniel's face. She felt a bit overwhelmed with emotion, and it made her eyes feel they would tear up.

            Daniel reached behind himself and fought with the covers an instant. He pulled the sheet up over them both and right up over both of their heads. The sunlight came through easily. Peggy touched his chest a moment, as he moved up and tucked one corner over the bedpost to keep the sheet aloft over them.

            "There," he said mildly. "Problem solved." Peggy felt she would have laughed, except that his gentle comedy made room again for her desire to tumble out of her. He leaned in to kiss her, as he brought his body in beside hers again and touched her once more. Peggy just let him now, and she felt it a relief.

            Her body took longer to build to a peak of pleasure now, and somehow that helped it feel more complete. She buried her hands in Daniel's hair this final time. And the two of them just lay together afterwards. Peggy's body felt altered from its previous state, as it had felt this morning. There had been a sort of vulnerability in carrying this potential in her body then. She breathed deeply now and felt a sort of gratitude and resilience in her chest now.

            Peggy tugged the sheet down and let it fall beside them onto the bed. She kissed Daniel several times, quite slowly, as the faintest moans escaped from some deep place in her chest. She felt those last, tiny tremors of pleasure shake gently in her body. She opened her eyes when they had finally faded away. She felt herself at ease with Daniel again, even in the brightness and openness of their now quite comfortable and familiar room.

            Daniel lay on his side still, propped up on one elbow. He ran his hand over Peggy's body again and again. He seemed to be studying her. She did not find this strange, but he seemed particularly attentive as he did it today. He spent minutes looking over her in silence, as he ran his hand along as if to feel her precise shape. He could feel, she knew, the energy her body still held deep within it. Even now, she did not know if she were entirely spent. Daniel turned to look at her face.

            "She got you going for days," Daniel said in a sort of hushed voice. Daniel meant Angie, Peggy knew. His hand ran over Peggy's body as he said it. The feeling his touch evoked created a felt resonance with his words. He seemed to be quite contemplative and almost in awe as he looked over Peggy. Peggy felt herself swallow down a rush of feeling that might have brought her to tears. Daniel saw this. He pulled Peggy to him and kissed her several times in response.


	3. A Love That Set The Stage

            They headed out to the water early on Sunday morning. Peggy carried Steven, still fast asleep, out to the car. She realized her legs were sore, as she leaned in to put him down gently, from all the action over the past few days. Lynn climbed in herself with her blanket and teddy bear, named Whiskery Windy by Daniel and Lynn's doing. Peggy drove them out of their neighborhood and away from the city. She put her hand on Daniel's knee when she was not working the gears. He hummed and sat with his arm out the window. He would never be less than ecstatic to go out for a day of sailing.

            Peggy glanced at the children in the rearview. Lynn had tried to read a little of her book, but soon she lay down next to Steven and went back to sleep. They were used to these trips, as they came out about every other weekend. When they got to the little town south of New York City where Daniel kept his boat very cheaply these days after a lead from a friend in the Coast Guard, they would stop in town first. She expected the kids would be awake on their own by then. They would go to a little diner, and then stop in a grocery store nearby to pick up things for lunch. The town was used to boaters, and Lynn and Steven would be excited to choose candies from the jars up on the counter to fill little brown bags for themselves.   Steven always wanted to be held up, so he could see them all at eye level before choosing.

            This entire part of their lives was entirely of Daniel's making, Peggy thought. She glanced over at him. He smiled at her, and she smiled back. Daniel had promised to take Peggy to the water right from the beginning of their real friendship. He would mention it now and again until it felt like a rumor. They had spent almost a year leading up to their first trip out. Perhaps he had actually been sussing her out fully before he brought her to someplace so sacred, Peggy thought now with a private smile.

            Peggy thought back over the start of her relationship with Daniel. She was still living with Angie then. They were still lovers. Peggy did not know Angie would leave then. Daniel invited Peggy to drinks several times before he switched and invited her to an early breakfast. That worked, as Angie's acting work kept her up late and sleeping in late, and Peggy spent her mornings alone before going to work. Peggy met him at little place owned by an Italian family who knew Daniel's family a bit north side of the SSR office downtown. They met there fairly often after that first time. Daniel was the one friend Peggy kept for herself from the office. The only one actually worth keeping.

            Peggy remembered how over the two years of their love affair, she and Angie would drift apart when Angie had a show or Peggy became obsessed over a job. When the distraction ended, they would draw close again. Angie got more and more jobs, and those distant spells grew longer. Then Angie found her first acting agent through a connection to Howard. Peggy remembered feeling only a little sad at the airport, as she hugged Angie and then waved. She did not know that moment marked the beginning of the end of their relationship.

            Peggy and Daniel grew more involved towards the end of that year. Daniel was invited to a Christmas party at the home of a new man at the office named Calvin. He liked him and invited Peggy to come. Some of the crew would be there, and Peggy would not mind to see them. Peggy had growing lonely with Angie gone to LA.

            She thought about how she was only four months gone, then. They still spoke as if she would return when the trail went dead in California. Perhaps it would be a couple of years, even. Peggy had remembered from that last year at Christmas also missing Angie, who was then floating roles in two different versions of _A Christmas Carol_ somehow. Evert Christmas, that show made a huge load of money for theaters and was held at earlier times in the day, as they expected families to bring their children. She agreed to go with Daniel, in part, to help pass the time of year.

            Daniel met Peggy on the street and walked with her to the address. Natasha came and took the bag from his arm with the dish he had brought. Peggy offered her own, as well. They hugged very softly, and caught up briefly as she put their two dishes in the oven. Peggy observed everyone closely. Calvin and Natasha did seem as likable as Daniel had said. Everyone else seemed the same. She exchanged stiff words with Chief Thompson and a few of the other men. When Natasha went off to entertain, Daniel came over and stood by Peggy. They chatted over small things until Natasha came and added their dishes to the table of food. She handed them both plates. Everyone was already helping themselves to the food, and there was plenty still to go. Their own two dishes were very similar, meatballs in red sauce.

            "Guess I won't be able to coax you over to my place with my cooking," Daniel said. "I'll have to take you to the water." Peggy felt a little heat flare in her chest from the flattery, though he spoke casually.

            "To the water?" Peggy said.

            "Mm-hm," Daniel said mildly. "I have a boat." He was still eying her dish. "How'd you learn to cook Italian?" he asked. His tone indicated that he felt this both a surprise and a kinship between them.

            "My friend, Angie taught me," Peggy said. "We lived together."            She noticed she felt a bit strange presenting Angie in this veiled way to Daniel, although she did not feel inclined to say anything more. "How about you?" she asked.

            "I was the youngest child of eight in a New York apartment," he said. "I used to sit up on the kitchen counter all the time and watch my mom and oldest sister, Christina, cook. It was my spot. Kept me out of the way, so I didn't get trampled on at first, then just out of trouble." Peggy laughed.

            "They let you help with the cooking?" Peggy asked.

            "Christina would," Daniel said. "I didn't really know if I could alone or not until I got back from the war."

            "You didn't return home?" Peggy asked. She assumed that Daniel had been sent back when his injury caused him to lose his leg and needed care, though she did not want to pry.

            "No," he said. "The house was still too full. I was in pretty good shape. I stayed on eighteen months after this." He gestured down at his leg faintly. That was an uncustomary long time. "I did some desk work," he said. Peggy felt curious but did not ask more. Daniel moved on to another part of the story, regaining the thread from before.

            "I moved into this small apartment with a kitchen. I didn't have a job for a little while, but I got these backlogged pension checks sort of by coincidence. I had this inspiration that I could cook for myself after choking down C-rations for months and months. I went to this cookware shop and spent a crazy amount. I think the guy in the shop thought I was buying it all for a lady to compensate for this. We got kind of carried away." Peggy was laughing. "I still got some of that stuff in a box under the counter waiting to come out. But I do make great food now."

            "That must have been a decent way to rediscover home," Peggy said.

            "It was, more or less," Daniel said. "I wish I'd had someone to share it with then. I cook over at Christina's place now with her and her kids." Peggy felt somehow that she already knew Christina was a war widow.

            "She lost her husband?" Peggy asked. Daniel just nodded once.

            "To the war," he said matter-of-factly. "Right before I left. She was heartbroken about my death before I even went away. I think it took her about a year to really believe I was home and not going to disappear on her."

            "You two are close?" Peggy asked.

            "Yeah," Daniel said. "Me and the kids, too. Gives me something to keep me occupied." He smiled at that.

            "You close with the rest of your family?" Peggy asked. He gave a kind of shrug.

            "No. We all survived, us boys, and there are just too many of us to all stay close to home. We'd still be crowding the place," he said. Peggy thought of Angie's descriptions of her childhood.

            "I cannot imagine eight siblings," Peggy admitted.

            "Just you, right?" Daniel said. Peggy nodded.

            "Easy to keep track of that many," he joked.

            "Was it hard do you think?" Peggy asked mildly. Daniel seemed to really think. He gave a short nod.

            "Yeah, it was hard for my parents, financially, before any of us were working. They really wanted us all to stay in school and do well. And hard on my mother to keep up with everyone just in general. That's a lot of needs, you know." He was quiet a moment. "I used to feel more or less invisible," he said. "Then I got this," he nodded towards his leg and crutch, "Now I feel like people notice me all the time, but all they see is this. It's just a new kind of invisible." He grew quiet for a moment. "I imagine that's what it must be like, somewhat, to be a woman."

            Peggy felt surprised by his insight. She looked at him a moment. He was looking about the room with his usual casual expression. Peggy felt a bit of new awareness of him, as he looked out over everyone there, and wondered what all he noticed. His attentiveness did not always show on the surface. He had a quietness about him that could belie the depths that were there underneath that calm surface.

            "When did you get your boat?" Peggy asked. Daniel grew noticeably enlivened by the topic.

            "As soon as I could afford it. About two years after I got home. It's the one thing I thought about during the war that turned out to be just as good as the fantasy," he said.

            Peggy thought that rather astonishing. She could remember very few things that matched what she had imagined during the War. The best things after were those that she could not imagine then, with Angie being the best of them all. She felt interested in coming out to the water with him. More so to find out some things about Daniel than about boating. His obvious love for it peaked her interest.

            Peggy smiled to herself again, as she remembered the rest of that part. There was mistletoe tacked to the doorway into the kitchen. Many jokes and absurd exchanges were has as the night progressed. Peggy got out of kissing Chief Thompson by kissing the back of his hand after some of the other guys tried to catch them out. He played along and really laughed at Peggy's gesture and referred to himself as "royalty."

            Peggy saw Daniel, later that night, back into the doorway to get out of someone's way. He glanced up at the mistletoe and looked about the room, clearly quite nervous. He grew relieved when he thought that no one noticed, then he saw Peggy watching. The moment felt like a joke that hung in the air for a moment.

            Peggy walked over to him, put her hand in the small of his back atop his jacket, and drew him forward into a kiss. She kissed him quickly and moved back a bit, then she kissed him a second time, without thinking, as if by some instinct. Her mouth had never gotten to where she could feel that first kiss. Her body seemed still not to trust it.

            On the second touch, Peggy felt a astonished at the feelings that swept through her body. Daniel's mouth felt incredibly soft against her own. And having him this close, Peggy quite suddenly discovered both his taste and smell. She could understand suddenly why her rather uninhibited friend Samantha during the war insisted on describing attractive men as "delicious." All of this moved through Peggy, rushed into much of her body easily, as if they were both made of something a bit like the spiced wine on their lips, as if they mixed just a little bit when they touched.

            When Peggy stood back again, she saw a corresponding look of surprise on Daniel's face. He gave the tiniest smile, but his face seemed more thoughtful. Neither of them blushed. Peggy chalked that up to all the wine. Peggy turned back to the room, where no one had noticed this happening. She and Daniel stood now with a sort of private joked that turned into a discovery between them.

            Peggy did not imagine it would mean much of a change between them then. She supposed now, as she thought back, that she did not really consider herself available. When Angie came back, that relationship would carry a weight that would disrupt anything else. Maybe it had now, Peggy thought suddenly. She could not remember precisely when her thoughts about this had changed. She felt uneasy a moment, then she came back to the present reality. Her love affair with Angie two days ago, however fraught, had not destroyed her marriage. Although it had put a nice, solid dent in her image of herself as always poised and in self-control. She felt it in her chest still, smarting quite vividly, as if to make the injury known.

            All of it felt distant out here. The memory of New York City always seemed to fade immediately when they were out on the water. They had chosen the perfect day. Peggy spotted whales breaching and blowing as far out on the horizon as they could see. The children practically screamed with excitement, as Daniel laughed at them, as he looked out, shielding his eyes from the sun. They wanted to swim in the Whale Water. Daniel loved that, Peggy could see. He loved how they saw things with a kind of respect most people did not have for children. He had a theory that children only learned to be inhumane from adults as they grew. Now that she knew her own two children, Peggy had to agree. Peggy knelt down to lift Steven out and lower him into the water. She gave him the floating device he still held onto sometimes, since he got tired easily. Lynn was practicing letting herself down into the water off the side of the boat, and Peggy held her hand.

            After a while, they wanted Daniel to get in with them. He had swimming clothes on under his outer clothes. He caught Peggy blatantly watching him undress and gave a flirtatious grin. She just lifted her eyebrows once without a hint of apology. He held the edge of the boat and jumped in, suddenly, rocking it such that Peggy reached out to splash him. He swam out laughing to play with Lynn and Steven. He was mainly the one who taught them to swim. He had grieved over it, Peggy knew, when he came home from the War and was no longer a strong swimmer. He gained a lot of ground, but he was comparing it to something Peggy had not known and could not remember. Peggy could swim well enough, but she never really liked it much for some reason. She had form but no practiced ease. Daniel laughed when Peggy said swimming was "not her sport." He did not think of it as a sport at all. When Daniel came back in, she would probably go in for a bit. Someone had to stay in the boat in case it drifted too far for them.

            Peggy could not easily let her hand trail along in the water in this boat. Daniel had sold his first and bought this second one, so that it would be large enough for both their children. That first boat was just big enough for two adults. When he first brought her sailing, he frequented a little spot a few hours from the docks in New York by a favorable wind. There was a little alcove with a place to tie up and a simple floating dock, so that they could swim. Peggy remembered the beauty of the water, and how tired they both grew from all the sun. They leaned back in the bottom of the boat, and then Peggy at the opposite end of the boat from Daniel with their bodies stretched out beside one another. She quelled an urge to touch his leg. The drops of sea water on his body were glittering wherever the sun still hit. He seemed utterly content, as if nothing harmful had ever once touched him. At that moment, Peggy realized for the first time that she might really fall in love with him.

            As they sat at breakfast at her new apartment about eight months later, Daniel gave Peggy a small maroon box with a velvet exterior. There were two plain silver rings inside the box. He asked her to hand it back to him if she ever wanted to be asked to be married. He made light of it all. Peggy understood him by then. He had a strange way of seeing humor and seriousness in the world and conveying what he felt. There was a uniqueness to it that perplexed Peggy at first, then made her trust him more than others. He had his own way about him. He was very much a self-derived person.

            Peggy got an explanation for some of the uniqueness of his perspective when he finally decided to tell her how he lost his leg during the War. Peggy noticed long ago when they first met at the office how his stories of war were different from everyone else's. It seemed that he had captured and maintained a set of memories of the commonplace and the absurd, as if he waded through war looking for humor everywhere and just missing the rest. He never talked about the major battles she knew he was in or cast a light on his own heroism in any way. She suspected he had been unusually brave and decorated to get a position at the SSR.

            He had. The Allies had been liberating a notorious prison camp in northern Germany when Daniel was hit. He had taken serious risks and brought down a machine gunner from a nest. The round, in consequence, was a large caliber and hit the bone. He told a patchy story about lying on a stretcher with a tourniquet for hours and trying to make sure the blood still flowed just a little between times of passing out from the pain. When conscious, he saw that they were bringing all the prisoners out of the camp. Some of them had been tortured, and all of them had been worked and starved until they looked ravaged by the specter of death. Peggy had seen it and had no problem picturing this. He finally got his surgery as night fell, and he recovered over those first weeks in a massive row of tents full of people who had been through far worse than himself. Many of them died of simply being worn through too much to recover even after being fed broth, as the medical team knew not to try to give them food. Peggy could tell that it had changed him.

            Daniel tried to make himself useful, even while bed-ridden and working through a fog of morphine, by helping to create rosters and cataloguing all the prisoners. He ended up being transferred to an office in France by his own request, where he worked to place people in America with ties to potential jobs. His main work was in finding leads to reconnect families. He had a particular knack, it seemed, at finding placements and recognizing family links even when buried and half-guessed. He delayed his own relocation to a recovery unit, which impeded his physical therapy. He did not care. He had to sign wavers of his own rights as an injured soldier to do the work. He felt more useful, he said, than he had during combat.

            He found his way under the wing of a one star General named, of all things, General Snarl, who recognized his talent. So he stayed on until the end of the War and then found himself a place in the SSR through that reference. His skills as a detective in the office had been cultivated by the endless search for the lost – children, siblings, parents, husbands and wives. His training was totally unlike the other men, and most of it had come to him quite naturally.

            Daniel said, after telling Peggy the story, that he could never see things the same way again. Nothing serious seemed so serious to him, he said, except for your ties to the people you love. That was the only desire that survived in people who otherwise were utterly destroyed by the cruelty they had suffered. Nothing else could animate them save their questioning and searching for where their people were. That was the most human of all things. Daniel even struggled to take his duties at the SSR seriously at times. He wanted to be useful, but he was not competitive like the other men.

            So Peggy took his strange orchestration of a marriage proposal quite seriously. She did not say anything about the rings for some weeks. Then she brought it up casually with Daniel. He had given no sign that he was wondering. They were sitting at breakfast at his place this time. He had glanced through a morning paper and showed Peggy a picture of the post of Angie's new film.

            "Is that your Angie?" he asked.

            "It is," Peggy had said. She determined to say something about their relationship before she and Daniel got much more involved. The two of them, she thought, should know about each other before anything really changed.

            "I tried on the ring," Peggy said to Daniel. "It does fit quite nicely." She gave him a look with one eyebrow raised. She knew he had lifted her size out of her file at the office, quite illegally.

            "You've thought about that, huh?" Daniel said in a contrived mild tone.

            "I have had many thoughts," Peggy said. Daniel looked up over his paper as he folded it. He caught her tone of flirtation – more of intention now really.

            "I do need to talk to someone first," Peggy said. Daniel picked up his coffee cup. He gave a sort of amused smile.

            "You gonna' call your parents?" he asked.

            "No," Peggy said although she thought now perhaps she should. Not for permission but to tell them. She decided then to just say it. "I need to call Angie." Daniel cocked his head slightly. He folded the paper and put it down. He took up his coffee again.

            "This one?" he said and tapped the paper. Peggy nodded severely. She felt her shoulders come up just a bit. She picked up her tea and took a drink. She stared down at the table a moment and tried to manage her tendency towards defense.

            "Daniel," Peggy said and felt glad her tone came steadily, "She was my girl."

            Daniel sat looking at Peggy and sort of cocked his head again. He did not get it at first, and his eyes glanced over the paper as he was thinking. She saw his eyes grow more concentrated as he read into her words more fully. He looked up at her about to say something.

            "Yes, that is what I mean," Peggy said.

            "Wow, Peg," he said. He moved the paper around to see Angie again. Peggy felt her shoulders were still up. She felt poised and ready for any response he might make. He took another drink of his coffee. He seemed like he was not planning to say anything else.

            "You're still just as interested, then," Peggy said in a leading tone. She saw that Daniel was thrown off by this for an instant. He got her meaning and responded with a sort of prideful look. He sat back in his chair.

            "Give me some credit, Peggy," he said almost aloof in tone.

            "How so?" she asked.

            "I many never be a socialist, but I've got some free thoughts in my head," he said. He gave a slightly arrogant, affronted look out the window. He was offended by the suggestion that he would lose interest in her over this, Peggy realized. When he looked back at her, still a bit hurt, Peggy smiled at him. He smiled back, although he seemed ruffled. He was still thinking hard, as well, Peggy could see. He had not guessed any of this.

            Daniel got up and poured himself more coffee. He looked out the window into the side yard. His brows were tightly furrowed when he sat down again.

            "Was this the girl from the automat?" he said as he tapped the paper again. Peggy could not hide her shock. She felt taken aback that he remembered.  
            "Yes," she said.

            "I met her once on the sidewalk," he said. Peggy faintly remembered. She and Angie were out, and they ran into Daniel on the street unexpectedly. Peggy had introduced them. She had not remembered it until now.

            "Yes, that was her," Peggy said. Daniel was staring at the picture of her again and more closely. He seemed lost in thought for a moment.

            "Maybe I really should try to like one of her movies," he said softly. He took a drink of his coffee as he stared out the window. For a moment, Peggy assumed he was joking. His tone was in earnest.

            Peggy sat back and felt herself smile. When she and Daniel had first become friends, she asked him to the pictures a few times. He always gave indirect answers and never followed through. Finally, he stopped on the sidewalk when she asked him while they were out.

            "Peg," he said. "I've got to confess something." Peggy turned. She had no idea what he was about to say. "I don't really like going to the pictures," he said. "Too much noise for me." Peggy laughed aloud and came and took his arm to start him going again.

            The morning Peggy revealed their love affair to Daniel seemed thoughtful, as if he were piecing together things he knew and information that had been left out.   Daniel had not asked Peggy any more questions about in the days afterwards, but Peggy found it easier to tell him stories now with Angie in her right place.

            Peggy pushed her sunglasses up now to see the color of the water.   She thought about that phone conversation with Angie, eight years ago. She had not realized how nervous she felt until after she had dialed. She swallowed and very much wished she had brought a glass of water into her study. A woman answered, laughing, and Peggy heard some noise in the background. She could tell from her voice that it was not Angie.

            "I'd like to speak to Angie Sutton," Peggy said.

            "All right," the woman said. She put the phone down. Peggy felt jarred when a man answered in a confident voice. There was no mistake. He took her calls now it seemed, and Peggy caught on quickly. She did not want to have to wrangle with some businessman to get to Angie.

            "Just tell her it's Peggy Carter and see if she wants to take it," Peggy said in her most assertive and inflexible tone. He wanted to resist, she could tell, but he yelled into the other room. Peggy waited.

            "You must be pretty special," the man said, "She just un-entangled herself from a blonde and is coming this way." Peggy did not much appreciate his joke. There was a pause and a sound of muffled voices. Angie must have taken the phone away from him.

            "Peg, hi," Angie's voice said. "Sorry about that." She sounded really apologetic.

            "I've got a bit of news to share, though it sounds like it may not be a good time for you there," Peggy said.

            "What is it, Peggy? Hang on," Angie said. She knew the call meant something important. The room grew quieter, as Angie must have closed the door.

            "I am considering getting married," Peggy said. She worked her lips and felt very uncomfortable talking about this over the phone.

            "To who?" Angie asked in surprise.

            "Daniel Sousa. He's an SSR agent," Peggy said.

            "Oh, yeah, I met him," Angie said. A long silence followed. "He's got a real sweet face. Do you love him?" Peggy felt a bit surprised to be asked so frankly.

            "Well, yes, I do," Peggy said.

            "That's good then," Angie said. The silence between them felt painful to Peggy.

            "Look, Ang, I just want to be sure before I decide anything," Peggy said. "This is it, right? This is how things are now? You're not coming back to New York." _To me_ Peggy might have said then. But she trusted Angie to understand what she meant. There was a silence, then, and Peggy heard what must have been a chair scrape, as Angie sat down.

            "The jobs are lining up for me here, Peg," Angie said. "You got to strike while the iron's hot." Somehow the tone of the phrase indicated to Peggy that Angie was repeating someone, probably that man who had answered, who was probably her new manager, Peggy realized. "I'll run out of steam, eventually, when people get sick of me."

            "And would you come back, then?" Peggy asked.

            "I'm hoping that won't be for a couple years, at least," Angie said. "And I don't know what I'd be worth then." Peggy felt herself blanch at the phrase. "Probably be strung out and lifeless by then," Angie said just as if it were a joke. Peggy did not like how she was talking, but she did not know what to say. She also wanted Angie to make her a direct answer, but she also felt she ought to let her make her own decisions without dealing with any drama.

            "So no New York in your future then," Peggy said as mildly as she could.

            "Not in sight, no," Angie said. She sighed, Peggy heard, on the other end of the line.

            "I wanted to be certain that you knew I thought of you before," Peggy said. She felt her jaw tense.

            "You always been too good to me," Angie said in a light tone that felt more like herself to Peggy. Angie added then in a confident tone, "Girl, if you want him, go get him."

            "I will then," Peggy said. There was a sort of solidarity between them, as if they were any two women talking about a man.

            "Tell him if he doesn't do right by you, I'll hire men and send 'em 'round," Angie said. Peggy gave a single huff of laugher at the idle threat.

            "He's not that sort of man, Ang," Peggy said.

            "I didn't think any man of yours would be," Angie said. "Good luck, Peggy. Take my love with you." Peggy smiled, although her heart hurt at the phrase. Angie had picked it up from Howard, after the two of them became friends. When she said it to Peggy now, the tone carried something different. She was not extending anything that Peggy did not already have. Just reminding her, in some way.

            Peggy thought now over their conversation that day. When Peggy had hung up the phone, she just walked away. They should have said more, Peggy thought, now, back then. They should not have ended things that way, if they did end them. She let Angie follow the dream of her own career and turned her sight towards her own life. And that meant towards Daniel now. She felt that she had taken Angie's love with her. She put the ring box in his pocket after she hugged him the next time he came over. So he asked her to marry him the next time they met, quite simply, and she said yes.

            Somehow, Peggy realized, she had turned away from the thought that she would ever see Angie again. Her career took off within the next few months. Peggy heard more about her from the papers than letters or calls. Most of that was lies, but Peggy felt their lives were entirely separate now. But that was a bit too rational, as Peggy always was at that age. They were not entirely separate. How could they have been?

            Peggy thought back now to that first time that she and Daniel had made love, soon after they were engaged. That was prompted by her conversation with Angie even more than their engagement, she realized as she thought about it now. She had wanted him for a long time, but she wasn't willing to act on it. Peggy felt a bit ashamed now, given what had happened between her and Angie. She had not been so capable of maintaining her focus on her relationship with Daniel with Angie. She wondered what that meant about herself.  

            The memory of that first time with Daniel was brought out vividly in her memory. Peggy had been wondering just how she might bring it up with him. She did not want them to wait until the were married, but she didn't know how he felt about it. Daniel beat her to it. He was at her apartment for dinner one evening. It was the time he usually would leave, and he was lingering near the door.

            Daniel scratched at his cheek in a slightly nervous way that caught Peggy's attention. She turned to look at him already before he looked up at her. He put his hand in one of his jacket pockets as he spoke.

            "Peg," he said. "Do you want us to go bed together sometime? Before we go on with this?" His demeanor read as a little shy to Peggy, which kept her from instantly and brashly saying yes. She gave a small pause instead.

            "Yes, I think I should like that," she said mildly, as she pressed her first knuckle to her mouth for a moment. Daniel sort of smiled and looked more eager about it. Peggy immediately began to plan to ask him if we wanted to go upstairs now. He pulled his hat down off the rack by her door, however, with a clear intention of leaving, as he had planned. Peggy leaned back into the counter. She had a sort of speculative smile on her face. She felt almost like teasing him.

            "I don't suppose you want to come up now," she said.

            "No," Daniel said with a kind of severity. "I got to rest up first." Peggy missed a beat then broke into a laugh. Daniel looked both joking and very serious at once. His posture gave away that he really was leaving.

            "You're actually serious," Peggy said.

            "Yeah," he said. "I got to make a good showing." Peggy laughed again.

            "Afraid I'll chuck you off if you don't please me," Peggy said.

            "Well, I assume," he said with a shrug. "But it's not that kind of worry." He gave her a steady look. "More just a matter of pride."

            "You have a reputation to maintain?" Peggy teased him.

            "More of a self-image," he said.

            Peggy held in a stronger tease.   He was blushing just slightly, although he likely would have kept up the line of their joking. She let him off the hook. She did step in to get a few kisses before he left.

            "You'll let me know when you're well rested and well fed and ready to come up," she teased him. She gave him a sort of pat on the low back as he went out the door.

            "Oh, yeah," he said. "I'll run up your stairs so fast, you won't be able to catch me." Peggy smiled at his humor as he tapped his cane once on the sidewalk. He gave a wave over his shoulder.

            Peggy hoped he would come upstairs and make love with her the next time he came over. She thought she read in his face when he came in that he was hoping precisely the same thing. They ate together and drank tea and caught up about one another's weeks. She reached over and put her hand over his and asked him if he would like to come to bed with her. It was the middle of the day on a rainy Saturday. He said yes at once.

            When they got to her room, they both grew shy about it all. Peggy closed the blinds. She came over to Daniel, and they kissed, which helped push away their shyness. Peggy drew off his coat and his tie. Peggy stood in close with her forehead against his own and took off his shirt and the undershirt beneath. She undid his belt and pants. He sat again a moment and took off his shoes, then his pants, then stood once more.

            Daniel put his palms flat against his body, as he looked down at himself a moment. The gesture was self-conscious and yet private in some way. He looked up at Peg and worked his mouth a moment before he spoke.

            "I hadn't figured out whether I should take this off," he said softly. He meant his false leg.

            Peggy felt unsure and also slightly impatient. She touched his chest, and felt his skin was far finer and softer than she would have imaged. She touched his arms and his sides and felt her jaw grip at the feel of him. He breathed deeply and put his hands to her sides.

            "I think you should," Peggy said. She wanted just Daniel when they climbed into her bed. He nodded quickly and sat down again. He put the leg off to the side against the end table by Peggy's bed. Peggy thought to wonder, as she watched him, whether he had taken anyone to bed in the years since war.

            He sat on the edge of the bed now in only a pair of boxers, and Peggy became overly conscious of how much she was still wearing. Daniel stood up easily, and he reached to help Peggy take off her dress. She ran her fingers around under the elastic band at his waist. As she leaned back a bit to see his face, he unhooked her bra in the back. He slipped it down her arms and let it drop away to the side. Peggy felt their naked chests touching for the first time. They kissed once more and put their arms about one another for a moment.

            Daniel sat down, somewhat suddenly, and pulled Peggy in close to himself. He kissed her body at her waist and ran his fingers over the small of her back, then undid the hooks that held her stockings in place. He ran his thumbs along the curves just inside the bones of her hips. Peggy let her hands run up his back and into his hair in an almost desperate movement. Daniel continued to kiss her body, as he took off the rest of her clothes.

            He leaned back then and looked at Peggy. He glanced up to see if she was all right with him looking at her so directly. She put her hand on his shoulder and took a slight step back for him to see. Daniel looked her over, and he seemed utterly absorbed with the sight.

            Peggy was looking down at him and felt a sort of strain within herself. She felt a longing for him but was not quite certain where to lead them. She let her hand move down, as she leaned in and kiss him once with a deep and lasting kiss. She let her hand fall to his thigh and ran her hand down it, as she felt its shape for the first time. Then she reached for the waist of his boxers again. He lifted himself up slightly so that she could take them off of him.

            Daniel tugged at Peggy's hand to urge her to come over himself and into the bed. He moved back into the bed more, as she followed his lead. Peggy let herself linger back slightly to get a look over his naked body for the first time. He seemed a little shy of being seen. She moved in over him and put her hand on his shoulder again and kissed him once. Peggy drew back a little and tried to think of something to say.

            "Are you a bit shy, darling?" Peggy asked in a tender voice that held only the faintest tease. He gave the lightest shrug he could manage.

            "A little bit," he said. His eyes moved over Peggy's chest, and he swallowed. "More distracted, though," he said. "You're even more beautiful in real life than I thought you'd be," he said as touched Peggy near her collarbone. Peggy gave the softest laugh at this.

            "You flatter me," she said. He looked up at her, though, very much in earnest. Peggy took his face in her hands and kissed him, slowly and with great care, as she felt the precise shape of his mouth. She wrapped her arms around him and let her body come in close to his.

            Daniel embraced her in return and ran his hands over Peggy's body. She thought she might shiver, but a heat ran through her instead of a chill. He sat back slightly and touched her with more intent. He ran his hands down her back and over her thighs. Peggy rose up slightly, involuntarily, as her legs tensed in response.

            "Tell me if I do something you don't like," Daniel said.

            "That's entirely unlikely," Peggy managed as she moved to kiss him again. Just as she did, he ran his hand up the inside of her thigh and touched her. His touched was gentle and exploring. It felt almost too light for Peggy to tolerate. She squeezed his shoulder and felt her jaw grip tight. Daniel looked up at her face when she leaned back. He had his other hand in the small of her back.

            "I don't know if I can handle this slow," Peggy admitted. She saw Daniel smile slightly. He pressed her harder. She responded almost dramatically, as her body lifted up and gave a shiver, and she groaned. He moved his hand the same way.

            "Is that better?" he said. Peggy just nodded, which was all she could manage. They looked at one another for a moment as they fell into the first sort of rhythm between their bodies. They began to kiss and caress one another with less inhibition and discover their dynamic as it unfolded. Peggy felt how they both swayed slightly along with the movement of Daniel's hand.

            Peggy observed with some part of her mind the precise nature of their lovemaking as it took shape this first time. There was a sort of gentle, steady quality to it all, much like in their relationship beyond. Yet there was a depth to it, a sort of deep pull that drew Peggy on. She never felt very much disoriented. She felt entirely herself, and yet she felt the full presence of her desire. She felt this now grown almost greater than herself, a force that reached out to encompass Daniel and even more. And yet she felt steady within it somehow.  

            Peggy acted on her desire to touch Daniel, as well. She felt worried for an instant that she would not know precisely how to touch him. But she found him very responsive, and it was easy to tell by reading his face and his body. He leaned back onto his free arm, and Peggy kept one hand braced on his chest. He took a deep breath and blinked his eyes, as if struggling to keep conscious. He shook his head as if just coming up from the water.

            "Peg," he said in a tone of astonishment. She smiled softly at his expression.

            "Haven't you done this before?" Peggy teased.

            "Obviously not, no. Not this," he said. He put his hands on her hips and pulled her close and brought her hard against his body. She though it characteristic of him that the tease made him become more assertive. Peggy felt herself pressing now against the lowest part of his stomach. He must have meant to entice her to want him. It worked.

            Peggy looked into his face a moment. Without a word, they both moved to bring themselves together. Peggy felt it easy, as she settled onto Daniel's lap. Daniel leaned forward again and wrapped his arms all the way around Peggy's waist. They held each other close. They sat unmoving for a long moment, as they were both all but overwhelmed.

            Daniel turned his face up towards Peggy. She held his face in her hands as she kissed him. Daniel watched her face as he began to gently shift his hips. Peggy took a deep breath and tried not to close her eyes. She felt her lips part, and she watched a smile of profound tenderness come over Daniel's face. She felt herself groan from some place deep in her body.

            Peggy felt how Daniel's hands began to move her, slowly, as if encouraging her to move her own body on top of him. She tried it, and she felt, as a result, how he touched a place deep in her body that sent a pleasure through her so deep that she shuddered from it. Peggy gave a groan each time without meaning to. She felt Daniel shift back a bit to see her better.

            "You all right?" he asked. He could not quite tell if she were feeling pain or pleasure or something in between. Peggy let him look at her more closely, as she kept moving. Any worry he had felt faded away, and they grew comfortable with one another. They kissed again and tried out new rhythms and ways of moving together.  

            Somehow, Peggy found herself astonished by how delicate and soft Daniel's body felt against her own. As if he should have been different simply for being a man. A man's body was no more a weapon than a woman's, and Peggy already knew how much more than an instrument of destruction a woman's body could be. Somehow, she simply had never touched these thoughts and made them her own until now in bed with Daniel.

            She felt that he had grown more rigid, and she put her hands on his chest and pressed a bit. He leaned back a little, and she got a better look at him. She saw that his jaw was tensed. A faint worry came over her that she was hurting him, and she realized how little she knew about the nature of his war injuries. She had no idea whether he felt pain in everyday life or not. His hand gripped her arm above the elbow, as if to brace himself.

            "Are you alright, darling?" Peggy asked him now. He gave a sort of restrained smile. His breath was labored.

            "I'm trying to last," he admitted. Peggy laughed at him softly. She kissed him slowly and slowed down how she was moving on him, as well.

            "Is this better?" she said, as she held him now close.

            "It is harder when I have to look at you," he said in a faint joke.

            "You can close your eyes if you trust me that much," Peggy said.

            "Then I have to feel you even more," Daniel said as he moved with her and held her hard. Peggy pushed him back once again to see his face.

            "Then don't try," she said. She touched his face. She meant to give a sort of permission. He took a deep breath and seemed to be thinking. He gave a stiff sort of nod.

            "You won't have to wait long," he said with a raise of his eyebrows and a single shake of his head, as if to make her a sort of promise. He had his arm wrapped around her waist, as he moved them. Peggy felt herself grin, although she suspected that she blushed a bit, as well. She pressed at Daniel's chest harder, then, to coax him to lie back.

            "May I watch you, darling?" she asked softly. She felt almost willing to seduce him into it, and she felt worried she might be growing overly bold with him. She did not know if he would feel shy. He understood what she was asking, however, and consented at once. He lay back and kept his hands still on her hips, as he moved with her. She saw his body release the tension he held, as he let the pleasure of the experience take full hold of him. He moaned and was overcome soon afterwards.

            Daniel recovered himself somewhat. He sat up again to put his arms around her and kissed Peggy over and over again. He leaned her back and kissed her breasts. He touched her practically everywhere. By the time she nearly lost her capacity for thought completely, he had recovered and turned her over into the bed. He lasted much longer now, and he seemed focused on making Peggy absolutely mad with it all.

            Peggy found out much later, she was his first lover not merely since the war but since the early on in his life as a soldier. He had two girlfriends as a young man in New York that he felt fine about, although the relationships did not seem very distinct. He had some sort of sexual relationships with both of them, although he never put them at risk of pregnancy. He was rather vague about it all when he described it to Peggy. He did not seem very secretive, more dismissive of the importance of those encounters. He felt deeply ashamed, she saw, when he told her about the women he had known as a young soldier, as he followed the lead, he said, of the other men. He finally slept with a prostitute in France, whom he said he realized could not have been more than sixteen. He was barely nineteen himself, but that did not weigh into it when he told Peggy the story. He said he was not a man then, and when she asked him what that meant, he said that he always followed the lead of other men. He wanted to be pleasing to women in the future, and he studied books on love making when he got home from the war. Apparently, it had worked, and he had learned.

            Peggy thought back on it all now, as she sat in their boat, and considered just how their love affair had unfolded. So much slower, she felt, than her and Angie's, but perhaps that only suited the relationship, as they intended it to unfold into something so encompassing in their lives as this. Where she and Angie had a sort of fire that brought them close and sent them away from one another, she and Daniel had a sort of gravity. They fell into alignment and moved together in a way that felt far more steady. Though it led them both to engage in it slowly, as if to cautiously approach something with such weight. She could not imagine having a short or maddeningly passionate relationship with Daniel. She felt almost from the start they moved towards a plan to spend their lives together, and it was not simply that Daniel was a man and someone she could marry, unlike Angie. There was something about him and their relationship itself that shaped itself into an everyday and lifelong partnership practically from the start.

            Looking back on it now, Peggy felt quite suddenly clear about one thing she had never realized fully. She had never really considered it at all until now. Her openness to her and Daniel's friendship, her confidence in initiating that first kiss meant as an intimate prank, her steadiness in approaching it all and searching for what she wanted most within their relationship, and the ease with which she had taken Daniel to bed – all of that had been shaped by her relationship with Angie. She had to wonder now whether she would even have the marriage if she had not been with Angie first. It seemed unlikely.

            Peggy looked at Daniel in the water with drops of sea water shining in the sun against his dark hair, as he lifted Lynn and tossed her into water, to her delight each time, again and again. He did a feigned sort of toss with Steven, who was not yet confident enough, but grew overwhelmed and joyful at the prospect. Peggy wondered, quite suddenly, whether she ever really would have noticed or valued a man like Daniel if not for the change that took place in her heart towards women during the time of that first love affair. The life she shared with Angie was gentle and domestic, as much as it was passionate and brave. That had set the stage for this beautiful life that she had now. Everything she thought she wanted had shifted around during that time, and Angie was the catalyst and steward of that time of change.

            Peggy wondered why she had not seen this before. And she felt entirely certain that Angie could not know that this was true. Peggy hoped that somehow, though she could not imagine it, Angie felt somewhat the same way about herself. She wished suddenly that she could reach her now. Although, in truth, she felt terrified by the idea of contacting her by phone or even by letter. Perhaps that frightened feeling might fade out in time. Peggy hoped this new insight might remain once it had, so that it might be conveyed.


	4. The Two Sides of One Heart

It took two months, incidentally, for Peggy to try to attempt to call Angie in LA. When she did, the number she had came up as disconnected. She tried leaving a message with Jarvis for Howard. He never got back to her.

            Peggy suspected that Howard mentioned something to Angie, however, because she got a letter from Angie a few weeks later. It was short and basically simply an apology to Peggy. The tone of the whole thing made Peggy's chest ache. She was so sad afterwards that Daniel finally asked her if he could see it. She let him read it through. He seemed really serious after he read it over once. He scratched at his cheek.

            "Seems like she feels real bad about what happened," he said.

            "Yes, I know," Peggy said. She sat silently for a long moment. She was not sure what else to say. She felt at a loss.

            "She shouldn't," Daniel said softly. Peggy felt this was more to Angie, wherever she was, than herself. She had never actually been unable to contact Angie if she wanted to before, not since they met.

            Peggy felt as if she'd been punched in the chest. She was not sure how she would get in touch with Angie again. If she did not want to be contacted, then Peggy would have to pull connections to contact her. And it wasn't all that easy with famous people. They had people hired on the other side of it to maintain their privacy. Peggy also did not feel quite right trying to break down a wall between them that Angie had put up. She wished the letter had contained more of Angie's feelings about what happened and worried now that their sudden love affair had really had a personal cost for Angie somehow.

            "Maybe it's more, too," Daniel said.

            "What do you mean?" Peggy asked.

            "I don't know," he said. He stared at the letter for a moment. "Something about the tone of this. It seems to me she doesn't like herself." He looked up at Peggy. "You know what I mean?" he asked.

            Peggy skimmed over the letter again and considered this. She could not quite explain it, but there did seem to be something in what he said. Peggy put her face in her hands for a moment.

            "I'm so sorry, Peggy," Daniel said.

            "What for?" Peggy said a bit astonished. He shook his head. He gave a sort of shrug as if it were obvious.

            "About this," he said. "She seems real torn up about it. You were, too. It just seems rough."           

            "Rough for you, as well, love," Peggy said. Daniel gave a dismissive shrug and closed his eyes a moment. He sighed. He gave his head a slow shake then.

            "She must have really wanted you," he said in a soft voice.

            "What do you mean?" Peggy asked.

            "Well, I don't know her," he said. "So I didn't know what to think. Some of those famous, rich types, they just take people lightly, you know what I mean? Other people aren't as substantive as they are in their heads. They do whatever they want with people and don't care much what happens. It's just some sort of narcissism they get from their position, I guess." Peggy thought of Howard Stark instantly. "I didn't know if she was like that," he said. "She could have changed you know, over the years in a different place. I don't get that impression from this. Seems like she still has a lot of feelings."

            Peggy considered this a moment. She felt a new wave of regret, but she was used to this now. She sort of blinked and swayed as it passed through her. She pursed her lips and made a severe sound.

            "I think you should try to find her," Daniel said. Peggy passed her hand over her brow. She felt uncertain.

            "I feel that way," Peggy said. "But I'm not certain."  

            "I'm not sure that's the aim in this particular case," Daniel said. He had a point, Peggy thought. The matter clearly weighed heavy on her heart.

            She tried Howard again later that week. She got him on the line this time. He was very vague about it all. He seemed to Peggy to be a bit in the dark and also to be avoiding finding out too much. She asked him to tell Angie she was thinking of her and hoping she would be in touch. He promised to pass that on. Peggy did not know how long that would take or what the affect might be.

            She wrote back to the management company's address on the letter. She kept it brief, since she didn't know who would actually read it. Nothing was forthcoming in the following weeks. Peggy thought perhaps she ought to give it a while before she tried harder to track Angie down. She even considered at one point flying to LA, but that seemed a bit foolish.

            Nearly nine months had passed since their affair when Peggy got a call unexpectedly. Daniel came to get her. He said it was for Peggy and a woman named Fran. She had no idea what that meant as she went to the line. The woman confirmed that this was Margaret Carter.

            "This is Frances Mayfair, we met a few years back if you're the right Margaret Carter," the woman said. Peggy thought for a moment. "I'm friend with Angie Martinelli, along with my friend Jill Sayers." Peggy got it then.

            "Oh, yes," Peggy said. Her own voice cracked when she spoke. She cleared her throat. "This is Peggy. You've got the right place."

            "I hope you don't mind I looked you up in the book," Fran said.

            "No, not at all," Peggy said. She felt a bit baffled. "What can I help you with?" She half expected her to want some kind of undercover work, though that did not make much sense. She was a bit too used to her name traveling through odd channels to people in various states of distress.

            "I don't mean to intrude on your life," Fran said. "But I thought I'd give you some news." Peggy felt a streak of absolute panic rake through her heart. She feared that something had happened to Angie.

            "Yes, what is it," Peggy said. She did not know how much her fear showed in her voice. Fran went on steadily.

            "Angie's grandmother Rose just passed away," Fran said. "She will in New York tomorrow for a few days." Peggy felt her own face tighten in pain at this, even though it was not the terrible kind of news she was fearing.

            "Oh," Peggy said with obvious empathy.

            "Look," Fran said as if leveling with her, "I am not sure what's going on. I'm not trying to meddle here. But I got the impression she was not going to tell you about it when we spoke." She was quiet, and Peggy realized that Fran was waiting for her to say something.

            "Yes, I suspect your right, I'm afraid," Peggy said. Her voice sounded very vulnerable. She could not seem to hide her emotion in the moment. That seemed to elicit more trust from Fran.

            "I just got the feeling," Fran said, "That was not right. Something about it just didn't hit me the right way," She seemed uncertain of how to explain. "I realize Angie might be upset that I'm intervening in this way. But I am." She stopped there. Peggy rubbed at her brow with her fingertips. She swallowed and stood up straighter with her free hand on her hip.

            "Yes. I am very glad you called me. I won't do anything particularly upsetting," Peggy said. There was a small pause. "But I am going to try to get her."

            "Good," Fran said. She gave a sort of severe sound with her breath on the other line. They had a sort of awkward silence between them. "I always got the feeling she still loved you, so I figured it almost had to be mutual."

            "It is, quite," Peggy said. "Thank you for calling me." Fran said goodbye to Peggy, who remembered to ask her to say hello to Jill and send her regards. Fran seemed pleased by that and said she would. She got off the line.

            Peggy stood there a moment, then she called and left a message for Howard with Jarvis. She intended to get pushy. Her tone came out slightly more aggressive than she meant. She thought for a few moments, then she went and got the New York phone book. She looked up hotels and finally realized that an expensive hotel like that one would not be in the book. She sat for just a moment and decided and made a few calls to her contacts and procured what she was sure was the number of the hotel where she had met Angie.

            She called and felt her jaw tensing. They would not want to taking an unsolicited message. Peggy put on her most demanding, assertive persona and more or less wrestled the reluctant front desk worker into taking a message for Angie Sutton, although he would not reveal whether or not she was staying with them. That was all Peggy could do for now. She felt unsatisfied, but she had no other leads.

            She talked it over with Daniel, as they cooked dinner. Lynn and Steven barely seemed to notice, as their collaborations on strategies for finding people were simply too common. He thought Peggy's best lead was to just show up at the hotel. She did not want to follow any leads that would send her through Angie's family. That felt too intrusive to Peggy even if she wanted to find her this badly.  

            The phone rang, and Daniel stood up and took over the pot of sauce that Peggy was stirring to let her go and answer it. She went with a quick step to the phone. She felt her heart had risen to her throat, as she managed a hello.

            "Hello, Peg," Howard Stark's voice said.

            "Howard," Peggy said. "Sorry for battering down your door."

            "That's all right," he said. "I figured I might hear from you."

            "You would not have called I imagine if you were not willing to help me," Peggy said.

            "Unless I missed my guess, this is about Angie," he said. Peggy was just silent. "I don't know what's going on with you two. She clams up right away when I ask her about it. I figured I would give you a lead, at least, and let you handle it from there." Peggy had a pencil already in her hand.

            "I will owe you one, Howard," Peggy said. Those were essentially Howard's favorite words in the world, from Peggy, at least.

            "I got the name of her hotel," he said. He read the name to Peggy and told her more or less where it was. "I got a number," he said. "They're unlisted." That really was a lead, Peggy thought. He read it out to her. Peggy stood there a moment in silence afterwards.

            "Thanks, Howard," Peggy said.

            "Don't mention it, Peg," he said. He got off the line quickly. Peggy thought it uncharacteristic of him to be avoiding entanglement. She suspected, however, that he fled anything that looked like it might have real, serious feelings involved. He just got overwhelmed by Peggy's read of him. He did not know how to operate.

            Peggy ducked into the kitchen to say she was going to make one more call. Daniel nodded severely to encourage her. She glanced over Lynn and Steven, who were still unbothered by all this. Probably because their parents grew obsessed with work on too many occasions, she thought with just a bit of discomfort.

            Peggy swallowed hard after she dialed the number. She exchanged a few words with the front desk man. She could tell right away that she had the right hotel. He kept the discussion very vague with incredible tact. Peggy assessed the feel of him and decided to go with another tactic. She left her message as politely as she could in a sort of neutral, assertive tone that gave every indication that she was not doing anything at all out of the ordinary. That conveyed a belonging and an appropriateness that would work in this case, she thought. He gave no commitment, but Peggy felt sure that her message would make it to Angie. She thanked him with a casual and polite warmth.

            When she hung up, she stood there for a moment. There was nothing she could do now except wait. Perhaps if nothing happened, she could go to the hotel in person. That did not seem much better, though. Angie would see her or not. It was her decision now, Peggy realized. She did not feel certain what would happen. She made her way back into the kitchen.

 

            Peggy had to work at the union the next day. Daniel had announced suddenly that morning that he meant to say and work from home that day. Peggy suspected it was so that he could answer the phone at home, though he did not say anything.

            When she came home, she put the kettle on. She was almost afraid to go and find Daniel and ask him. He came into the kitchen, while she stood with her back leaned against the fridge.

            "Hey," he said. He came over to Peggy. He had a slip of paper in his hand. He kissed her cheek. "She called," he said and obviously meant Angie. "Here's what she gave me." He held out the slip to Peggy and explained it. There was the address of a diner near downtown with a time tomorrow that Peggy could work easily. "She seemed kind of scared of me," Daniel finished softly.

            Peggy laughed a bit at that. She put her arms around Daniel. He hugged her for a moment. When she stood back, he smiled at her.

            "You look kind of scared of her, actually," he said. Peggy laughed slightly. She sniffed, as her eyes felt weepy with emotion.

            "I suspect we're all a bit overwhelmed," Peggy said.

            "Me, too, this time," Daniel said. Peggy had reached to pour her tea water and turned back to him. She sat the kettle down.

            "What are you worried about, darling?" Peggy asked.

            "Nothing specific," Daniel said. "There's just a lot of feelings involved." Peggy laughed a bit. "I'm not used to being involved in this."

            "In this?" Peggy teased him. "Lesbian drama?" He could not hold in a burst of laughter. He ran his hand across his eyes.

            "I would not call it that myself," he said, "But, yes. I'm not used to being between two women, I guess." He looked up at her still smiling. The joke tried to lighten the mood, but it really could not be lightened. "I think it's going to be all right," Daniel said with willful confidence. Peggy nodded at him in a sort of severe agreement.

 

            Peggy approached the diner at the address she had the next day without a pause in her step. She glanced about for Angie, but she was not there yet. Peggy said hello to a waitress who came over and followed her to a booth. She sat down with a very clear memory of what Angie's automat uniform had looked like in her mind.

            Peggy ordered a cup of tea. She sat and drank it and worried that Angie would not come. She tried to steady her own nerve.

            She did not have very long to wait. Angie came in, and Peggy thought her heart would leap right out of her chest. Angie took off some large sunglasses that she was wearing and a scarf. She looked relieved that the waitress did not recognize her. She gestured towards Peggy.

            Peggy stood up as she approached. The waitress said something that Peggy could not decipher. Angie seemed incredibly sad to Peggy. Her eyes were dark with what looked even from a distance like grief. Peggy stepped in without a pause and drew her into a hug. She felt Angie's hands on her shoulders. The touch was light. She heard Angie let out a deep breath.

            "Thank you for coming to see me, darling," Peggy said as she held Angie back to look at her face. Angie tried a smile, but it would not stay. She looked not only sad but a bit scared of Peggy. She worked her lips and did not say anything. Peggy considered a joke, but she could not find one.

            They sat down across from one another. Angie ordered a cup of coffee. She and Peggy sat in a sort of nervous silence for a moment, as they waited for it to come. She took a drink, and she did not seem to mind the taste of a cheap diner coffee in the slightest. She sniffed severely as if keeping herself sobered.

            "I'm so sorry to hear about your grandmother," Peggy said. Angie blinked slowly in a sort of pain. She was really grieving Peggy could see.

            "Thanks, Peg," Angie said. Her voice seemed almost timid. She took another drink of her coffee. She looked up at Peggy after a moment. Her eyes trailed over Peggy's face. "How you been?" she asked. She seemed almost nervous to find out.

            "I've been well," Peggy said. "The children just started back to school. We had a fine summer. I worked a bit less than usual and spent more time with them. They're at a good age for that sort of thing." Angie gave a vague smile. She seemed almost surprised and a little relieved.

            "How's Daniel?" Angie asked without looking at Peggy's face.

            "He's well," Peggy said. "Still at the SSR, probably to both of our amazement. He's worked his way up there with Thompson in charge, and there've been a lot of exchanges among the men. It suits him better now. The Cold War has called for very different skills among government agencies." Angie looked closely at Peggy's face as she said all of this. Although she held a stunningly neutral expression, Peggy could read through it and see that Angie was watching her very closely, as if to see through what she said. "We are doing well," Peggy said.

            Angie blinked and seemed to relax a bit. She took another drink of her coffee. She rested her arm on the table after she sat the cup down, which seemed a good sign to Peggy.

            "How's LA?" Peggy asked as she took a drink from her own cup. Angie gave a sort of scoff and a cynical laugh came after it. She shrugged and raised her eyebrows in a much more familiar expression to Peggy.

            "It is what it is, and there ain't no changing it," Angie said. A faint impression of her old accent was there, Peggy noticed. Peggy smiled at this.

            "Getting plenty of jobs?" Peggy asked.

            "Still rolling them in," Angie said without feeling. Angie ran her fingertips across her brows for a moment. The gesture seemed very grave to Peggy.

            When she put her hand down on the table, Peggy stared at it a moment in indecision. She reached over then and stalled for an instant before she placed her hand on Angie's. Angie watched, and she did not move her hand. She looked up a Peggy, and Peggy really could not read her expression now. She held an utterly composed and blank look on her face. Peggy blinked a few times and tried to find her own voice again.

            "I am… sorry that I slept with you and then rushed out on you," Peggy said point blank. Angie sort of laughed at that despite herself. Peggy sat with her hand over Angie's for a moment. "Why did you not respond to my contacts afterwards?" Peggy asked her softly. Angie looked up at her and seemed very grave under the surface of her polished and calm expression.

            "I figured I done enough damage," Angie said. She sniffed severely again. She sort of bit her lower lip after. "That man of yours seems nice," Angie said. Peggy gave a small smile. She moved her fingers on Angie's hand to get her to open it and hold her hand back. After a moment, Angie did.

            "Yes, I picked him especially," Peggy said in the lightest, partly joking tone.

            "You two were all right after what happened?" Angie said. "He didn't seem in the dark." She looked extremely distressed. Peggy read it as even more severe given how hidden it seemed.  
            "Yes," Peggy said. "I have a very strong marriage." Angie sighed deeply. She looked relieved and her expression of grief seemed to surface again.

            "Thank God," Angie said softly. Her tone was quite severe. She rubbed at her eyes even though they were dry and took a deep breath.

            "You have not damaged anything," Peggy said. Angie turned her face up and gave a scoff at that. She did not take Peggy seriously. Angie shook her head once and lifted an eyebrow. "You happy about what happened?" Angie said.

            Peggy did not know how to answer this. She looked over Angie's face for a moment. Angie gave her a seemingly callous stare. She raised her eyebrows a bit as if her point were proven. She let go of Peggy's hand to touch her brow again. She grew emotional then and could not quite hide it.

            "God, Peggy," Angie said.

            "What is it, darling?" Peggy said. Angie turned her face up at this.

            "How you can call me 'darling' after all I done to you?" Angie said with a tone of mild despair.

            "Made love to me in a fine hotel?" Peggy said. She meant a joke. She laughed herself, but she saw Angie just purse her lips and seemed distressed. "I made choices, as well, love," Peggy said. Angie put her head in her hands. She sniffed after a moment, and Peggy could tell she was starting to cry despite herself.

            "I've been selfish. And with you. You, Peg," Angie said. She looked up and shook her head again and seemed depressed. She looked over Peggy face one more time. Angie started weeping at the sight of Peggy now.

            Peggy thought of saying something to calm her, but she could tell that she was weeping in earnest. She got up and came around and sat beside her in the booth. She put an arm around her shoulders and placed her other hand on her arm. She rubbed her arm softly. She did not say anything for a moment.

            "Oh, Peggy," Angie said. "I never was any good." Angie tried to steady herself with a hand pressed to her face. She sat there with her eyes closed. Peggy kept watching her for a moment. Angie seemed very much alone and in pain. Peggy felt distressed that this could happen while she herself was right there.

            Peggy decided to take control of the situation if she could, quite suddenly. She stood up and went to the other side of the booth. She got out money and placed more than enough on the table. She pulled her coat out and stood again and drew it on. She came close to Angie and held out her hand to her. Angie looked over at her hand. There was a tiny pause, but it felt like an eternity to Peggy.

            "Come with me, darling," Peggy said. The depths of her own desire came out in her tone. In response, Angie looked up at her face for a long moment. She looked back at Peggy's hand. Then she took it, as if compelled. Peggy led her out of the booth. Angie wrapped her hair and put her sunglasses on again, which gave her a sort of anonymity on the New York street.

            Peggy led them on quietly with her arm in Angie's. They came to a Central Park, and Peggy led them to a quiet part of the trails there. The walking made Peggy feel more confident, although she could not say how Angie felt with her eyes so hidden.

            Peggy asked Angie about the funeral. She told her all about it, as they walked. When they sat down on a bench, Angie took off her sunglasses. Peggy looked over and saw how sad her eyes were. She held Angie's hand. Angie looked over at her, as if surprised.

            "It's common, you know, for the remaining partner in a marriage to pass within a year after the other one is gone," Peggy said.

            "Yeah," Angie said in a soft voice and a heavy tone. She shifted back into the bench seat a bit. "I just didn't figure it for grandma Rose. She never really liked my grandfather. But I guess their lives were so entangled, it killed her anyways."

            Peggy sat sort of blinking at the dreadful tragedy held in that statement. No wonder, she thought, Angie looked so grieved. Angie took a deep breath, and Peggy glanced over at her. She seemed lighter somewhat for having said these things. She licked her lips and took a deep breath. She straightened herself up against the back of the bench somewhat.

            Angie sort of glanced over Peggy. She seemed to really concentrate for a moment. She turned to Peggy and watched her face as she spoke.

            "Are you happy in your life, Peg?" Angie asked.

            "Yes," Peggy said, "Honestly."

            "How bad did it mess things up what happened with me?" Angie asked. Peggy raised her eyebrows and thought how she could explain. She smiled a bit at the phrase, since it made her think over their entire relationship, while Angie was considering only that one day.

            "It did not mess things up at all," Peggy said, "Unless you count my feelings." She laughed slightly. "Daniel was just fine. I know that sounds strange, but he's a very steady man. We have a very strong marriage. He was more surprised, I think, than anything."

            Angie gave a sort of laugh of amazement at that. She had one eyebrow cocked still. She ran one hand over the scarf on her head distractedly.

            "Too strong for some self-indulgent actress to wreck?" Angie said. She had a slight smile. She seemed almost amused by this. She turned and smiled at Peggy, even though her eyes seemed sad. "That's good, considering how little I was looking out for you." She closed her eyes as if in the face of a wave of pain. "I'm sorry, Peggy," Angie said with severity.

            "It's truly all right, darling," Peggy told her again.

            "It isn't," Angie said. "It isn't all right." She turned to Peggy again. "I did not think about your life. I can't make excuses. LA, this career, it makes you selfish." She said it very matter-of-factly. "You have to want people to want you to make it in this business. But you're different Peggy," Angie said.

            "Different how?" Peggy said. Angie looked over her face. She seemed at a loss.

            "Because I really want you, for one thing," Angie admitted. Peggy felt a heat rush through her body at this. She sat almost uncomfortably with the feel of it. "I'm sorry," Angie said.

            "No, don't be," Peggy said. "I want you, too, as you well know. Clearly, I always will." Peggy turned to Angie at that. Angie seemed thoughtful for a moment.

            "And because I really love you," Angie said. That seemed a separate thing from how Angie said it now than her wanting Peggy. If she had felt that she could, Peggy would have leaned over and kissed Angie on the cheek. She turned to stare at the sidewalk for just a moment instead before turning back to her.

            "I wish you had not kept avoiding me," Peggy said. Angie gave a sad smile. She swallowed.

            "You always loved me too much," Angie said with an odd sort of vague smile. Peggy felt her own brow tighten. She did not like this.

            "What does that mean, darling?" Peggy said.

            "More than I deserved," Angie said in a grave tone. Peggy sat up more. She took Angie's hands in her own. She felt terrible in this moment that Angie could be so confused about how things truly were between them. She gave Angie a very severe look and shook her head.

            "You taught me all about love, my darling," Peggy said. She touched Angie's face very lightly with a glancing touch to get her to turn her face towards herself. Angie gave a half a smile, but she seemed not to hear Peggy. She turned away from her, as if she could not help it.

            "Seems like you've learned more," Angie said in a gentle argument. Peggy considered this for a moment. She had, of course, learned more about how to love over the years. Certainly with Daniel, and with Lynn and Steven, and also from a number of great friends. Even her own parents, she felt, were closer to her now than they had been for years. When they had visited before, she felt closer to them than she had even while living with them. All of that, however, Peggy felt stood on a foundation of the time she spent with Angie, wrapped in her love everyday.

            Peggy looked at the side of Angie's face a moment. Her eyes focused, against her will, on Angie's lips. She remembered what Angie had said the last time they were together about how sweet it always was between them. That made her think of Daniel and how sweet it all was between the two of them.

            Peggy took a deep breath. She started in and explained to Angie the realization she had about her marriage and how it connected with her time before with Angie. She could see Angie felt resistant, but she kept on until she had said everything she had wanted to about it. Angie sat in a sort of stunned silence afterwards. She did not know what to think or say, by Peggy's estimation.

            "What's been happening to you over these last years?" Peggy asked.

            "Nothing I'm proud of, "Angie said with a shake of her head.

            "Surely you don't mean that, Ang," Peggy said. Angie shook her head again and fell again into a stunned form of complete silence.

            "You've done more than right by me, even if things got mixed up the last time you came to New York. I wasn't really prepared for the reality of you right there in front of me, I suppose," Peggy said. The matter seemed lighter between them now. Peggy thought it over for a moment.

            "I should have protected your marriage," Angie said. "If it hadn't been what it is, I'd have risked breaking your heart."

            "You didn't, though," Peggy said. Angie seemed reluctant to let it all go even now. Peggy thought about what Angie had said for a moment. She wondered how she could explain what she knew to Angie. Peggy worked her own lips. She sat forward a bit and rested her arms on her knees a moment. She sat back then and turned to Angie. Angie took a deep breath and rubbed her nose once.

            "I think you should understand," Peggy said, "That it's not as if you ditched my heart and went off someplace, and I handed it over to a better person for better care." Angie's face showed enough evidence despite herself that Peggy gathered that this was, more or less, how she saw it. "You have given me a part of my heart, Angie." Angie gave a slow blink and smile.

            "That's nice of you to say," Angie said.

            "I'm not being nice," Peggy said. "I can be accused of many things, but nothing so shallow as nicety."

            "I don't want your heart to be divided because of me," Angie said. Peggy turned to look at her. Peggy laughed softly.

            "Every heart has two sides," Peggy said. Angie looked up at this. "Or at least, mine does." She gave the faintest shrug.

            Angie's eyes grew soft. She smiled still. She still seemed grieved, but Peggy could tell that the tone of it all had changed. She lacked the heaviness and despair she had carried with her into the diner. Peggy felt worried about her being back in LA. She wanted to ask her more, but she was not sure precisely what to ask. Angie laughed suddenly.

            Peggy gave her an inquiring look. Angie sort of shook her head lightly. She thought a moment before she spoke.

            "Daniel seems really lovely," Angie said with another laugh. "When we were getting off the phone, he said to me, 'Try not to spook. Don't run away.' I guess he could sort of tell I was panicking." Peggy laughed slightly.

            "That sounds like Daniel," Peggy said. "He has a way about him." Angie smiled warmly at this. Her thoughts went to her grandmother Peggy could see. Peggy imagined she was comparing the two marriages she had been contemplating that day. "You would like him," Peggy said confidently.

            "I'm sure," Angie said. "What are you kids like?"

            "Lynn and Steven?" Peggy said. "They're beautiful people already, very kind and disciplined." Angie laughed at that phrase.

            "Like their parents, then," Angie said.

            "I don't suspect I shall be winning any awards for self-discipline this year," Peggy joked. Angie actually laughed this time. Peggy had gotten to her, she felt relieved to see. "I was never much of a contender for kindness," Peggy joked further.

            Angie put her hand on Peggy's shoulder. Peggy glanced at it and then watched her face. They both sort of settled into the feel of it. The passion it elicited cleared away after only a moment, and the depth and intimacy of their friendship underneath remained. Peggy could tell by Angie's expression that they both loved the feel of it.

            "Don't run away again, darling," Peggy said. Angie looked her over for a long moment. She looked out over the park then.

            "I won't," Angie said in a soft, confident tone.

 

            Peggy arrived home a few hours later. She looked over the mail for her on the table briefly, as was her habit. She had been watching for a letter from Angie for a long time, and she did not have to now. She felt deeply relieved and at peace, she could feel.  

            "Hey," Daniel said as he rounded the corner into the kitchen.

            "Hello, darling," Peggy said easily. She dropped her coat on the back of a chair and put her bag with it. She took a deep breath.

            "So, you didn't sleep together this time," Daniel said in a light, questioning tone. "I see no signs of weeping." Peggy gave him a rather defiant glare. She felt her back had stiffened. She did not find an answer.

            "I better watch that," Daniel said almost in a whisper. "Might get socked in the jaw."  

            "I would never hit you, darling," Peggy said matter-of-factly. "You are the only man in the world I would never hit besides my father. Steve will make three. I don't actually expect there will be any others." She came and put the kettle on for herself as she said this.

            "Not even Steve Rogers?" Daniel asked.

            "No. That was quite different," Peggy said without looking at him. "I'd have given one to Steve under the right circumstances." Daniel seemed very amused by this proclamation and laughed behind her. He came over to Peggy, and he leaned in to kiss her when she turned around. He made it linger a little, which softened Peggy's mood against her own will.

            "Trying to make friends now," Peggy teased him. He nodded in concession and stood back. She looked over his face, and she could not really hide the softness for him held in her look.

            "How was it, really?" Daniel said. "I shouldn't have started off with a joke."

            Peggy leaned against the counter. Her hand had come to her stomach. She considered what she might say. She found it hard to communicate these kinds of things. Daniel was reading her already, she knew, and getting some information off of her. She turned to pour the boiling water in the kettle over her teabag.

            "She seemed very torn up," Peggy said.

            "About last time?" Daniel asked.

            "Yes. Among other things, I think, as well, but that was sort of the crux of it all," she said. "Seems you were right."

            "How so?" Daniel asked.

            "She did sort of seem to be hating herself," she said.

            "For wanting you?" Daniel said. Peggy gave a sort of shrug and half a nod.

            "Yes, I suppose," Peggy said.

            "You're probably the best thing that she wants," Daniel said.

            "She said some things that would imply that she thinks that anyway," Peggy said.

            "Christina used to be like that," Daniel said as he shook his head in thought. He went around to the table and pulled out a chair and sat down. "She thought she was bad. I don't know how that happened. No one thought that in our family." That did sound to Peggy like Angie.

            "Not even your parents?" Peggy asked.

            "No," Daniel said with conviction. "They thought she was an absolute rock and held the whole family together." He scratched at his neck. "Maybe with all the rest of us on her mind, she just got to where she couldn't think about wanting things for herself." He gave a sort of shrug.

            "I think it is something that happens to women often," Peggy said. She opened the sugar jar and got a spoon. She dipped out a little.

            "Really?" Daniel asked in a curious tone. Peggy nodded as she thought about this. She took the teabag from her cup, before making him an answer.

            "I'm lucking, honestly. I know what I want, and that was always the hardest thing for me. I already had plenty of will to try and get it once I indentified it. It's a sort of a deserving, I think. It never occurred to me that I did not deserve what I wanted if I could get it for myself fairly, without harming anyone," she said. Daniel was sitting there smiling to himself when she looked up. "What?" Peggy asked, already smiling herself in response. He shrugged and blinked once slowly.

            "How can I not like that?" he asked mildly, "When part of that means me." Peggy laughed softly as she stirred some sugar into her tea. She came over and ruffled Daniel's hair a bit before she sat down. He tugged faintly at the back of her leg as she did. Peggy sat down across from him at the table.

            "I don't think you need to doubt me anymore," Peggy said. "I'm not going to deceive you about any of this."

            "What do you mean?" Daniel said.

            "Over Angie," Peggy said.

            "You were never trying to deceive me, Peggy," Daniel said. "I never thought that for a second. It's not about doubting you, for me." He rubbed his nose and made a serious and thoughtful expression. "I'd just like to know before if it happens again." Peggy did not know what to say to that, and she could decipher how serious he was being now. Since it would not happen again, she felt it did not matter if she answered.

            "What were the other things, if you want to say?" Daniel asked. Peggy had lost the thread and looked at him. "With Angie? Her grandmother?"

            "Yes," Peggy said. "She died so soon after Angie's grandfather, and she supported Angie in getting out of a bad marriage when she was young." Daniel made a severe sound at this.

            "That happens a lot," Daniel said. "People in long marriages going right after each other." Peggy gave a half shake of her head as she took a drink of her tea and went on.

            "She very unhappy in her own marriage," Peggy said. "Angie did not describe as grief. They were more entangled, I think, as she saw it."

            "Geeze," Daniel said severely.

            "Mm," Peggy said as she took another drink. "It seems like LA culture is quite dreadful."

            "I'd imagine," he said. "She grew up like me didn't she?" Peggy thought about this for a moment. Angie really had grown up much like Daniel, a New Yorker, Italian, almost the same number of kids, and about the same economic class. Peggy wondered if their neighborhoods were near one another for the first time. Perhaps they grew up in the same one. Angie never took Peggy home like Daniel did, so she was not sure. She nodded.

            "Yes, I suppose she was," she said.

            "Maybe you have a type," Daniel said and laughed at his own jest. Peggy considered making a joke about their difference in sex. She did not like the joking, so she kept it in.

            "Come off it," Peggy said in a light tone. Although she did not much mind the joke this time, she could not go on with it. That made it much less fun for Daniel. He did not like to joke alone. "The two of you are very much unalike," Peggy said. She did like the idea of them being compared or equated somehow. She loved them both, and yet they were entirely distinct.

            "Got to be something in common if we love the same woman," he said to try the joke out again. Peggy gave him a severe look without meaning to do so. She turned back to her tea. He could not win her to the jest, so he dropped it, Peggy could feel.

            Perhaps he was right in a way. She had always assumed they would like one another, except that she never expected they would really meet. It might be fraught somehow with Peggy in the middle. The thought felt a little beyond her imagination. Within her there, they would like each other, she felt almost certain.

 

            Peggy had gotten Angie's private number at home in LA before they parted ways in New York. She called her the next week just to talk over casual things. Angie told her a little about the film she was starting in a few weeks. Peggy had a working knowledge of everything Angie had done. She would go see them with a couple of friends from work, who would see more or less anything. She never told them that she knew Angie personally. When they hung up, Peggy felt happy in a way that she carried with her for days.

            They started up a little routine. They would talk for maybe half an hour each week. Angie started calling Peggy on Sunday nights, so she would get the long distance bill. Across that next year, Angie started pushing back. She wanted some time clear, away from filming. Her manager, Richard, did not want her to take any. Peggy asked often, but Angie did not seem to have any real friends. There were names that would come up, but all the connections seemed shallow, even the frequent ones. Peggy just listened and tried to ask questions mostly.

            Peggy mainly told Angie stories about Steven and Lynn and about her work and occasionally about Daniel. There was a strange sort of joy at having Angie back in her life again. When something beautiful or difficult happened, she found herself imagining explaining it to Angie later. That helped Peggy reasons she could not explain, no matter what the nature of the story was. Peggy harbored a regret for a while that they had not kept in touch over the years. She had to let that go, she realized, and just enjoy the reestablishment of their friendship, strange as it had been when it started.    


	5. What Comes Of Wanting Too Much

Peggy watched the flow of people move through the New York airport. In public places like this, she felt remarkably secure in her own anonymity, yet also alarmed by how hard it was to keep track of everyone. Often when at the airport, she stood against the wall and tried to only read the small signs of history and intent on a few of the passersby. She could feel quite inundated otherwise. Today, she felt more preoccupied with her own feelings. She was there to pick up Angie, who was moving back to New York.

            Over the last year, Angie's original contract with her agent had come to an end. She had always just assumed she would sign on for another five year stint. Good roles were still likely to line up for her. Angie began expressing doubts, however, that she really wanted to resign. She talked it through with Peggy. Angie named the time in New York when she was just really established on the theater scene before she went to LA as the best time in her life. She referred to it as "back when she was happy," which originally had upset Peggy.

            Peggy asked her a lot of questions, and Angie explained how different acting was in those two spheres. She missed being able to run through the whole story time and again and see what proved different each night of a show's run. She said she could see in the theater how the precise way she played her own role could affect the entire story. She could never really remember much of a film she had shot, as they broke it up scene to scene and ran through each a few times. She would not even see some actors or segments until the film opened. She said she could barely recognize the story usually. Even her own performance seemed unfamiliar.

            Angie finally stated outright that she planned to drop her contract and come back to the city and the theater scene. She seemed terribly nervous, almost scared. Peggy had underestimated how hard such a change would be. The pressures placed on Angie in LA got so intense, that Angie seemed distracted all the time and could barely keep up a line of conversation on the phone. She finally hired a lawyer to help "get her out" as she explained it to Peggy. His name was Walter Madden, and Angie described him as "sharp as a sword" and "dressed to the nines," and she seemed relieved after she hired him. She said he could handle Richard and anything else that came at her on her way out.

            Peggy took a long time to realize that Angie was quite serious and would follow through with her plan. She was surprised, then, when Angie gave her a date. Peggy had not intended to meet Angie at the airport when she came, until Daniel asked her and looked somewhat disturbed that there was not already a plan. Peggy asked Angie if she wanted to be met when she first came in. Angie seemed thrilled by the idea, and even a little shy about it. Peggy's presence there created a sort of bookend to Angie's departure, Peggy thought now.

            Peggy thought back to that day so long ago when Angie left for LA. She had taken only a pair of briefcases and a purse with her when she left. She must own more now, although she had not said anything about shipping any of her possessions ahead of her or behind her. She wondered what Angie would have brought with her from LA when she appeared. A cross country move was no trifle, and the contents of one's suitcase took on a new meaning.

            This trail of thought led Peggy to remember the last time she had visited the New York airport about less than six months ago, when her own parents had visited New York for eight days. They flew in from London, and Peggy had not seen them in person in four years. She remembered their stay now, as she thought back to the image of them walking out of their gate came into her mind. They looked stunningly the same to Peggy. They were excited to visit with the children, who were so much grown from when they had visited. They had both been quite small when they had seen them the first time. Peggy did not realize how excited and preoccupied with the trip they had been until she saw what they had brought with them in each of their single briefcases.

            Peggy's father had brought a pair of leather soft-bound journals, two pencil sets, and a decent pair of bini's. He took Steven and Lynn out alone on a set of field trips and showed them how to mock up their first attempts at naturalists' notebooks. He had a way of presenting it all that kept them engaged, and they departed and returned as if on grand adventures. Since then, Lynn had occasionally brought hers out and worked with it, including once at the beach. She seemed very dedicated to the idea.

            Peggy's mother had brought a small telescope and microscope. She asked Peggy offhandedly if she had anything like them. Peggy said no and actually wondered where she had found such things. Peggy's mother had sat down at the microscope in the living room. She put it on the coffee table and sat herself on the floor. She had a few slides that she must have put together that day. Within half an hour, both Lynn and Steven had discovered her and were utterly ensconced. They scrutinized segments of a butterfly's wing and a leaf. Lynn made a slide from the thread from her favorite blanket. Steven wanted to put a piece of candy in a slide. He settled for a dot of honey. They were both incredibly attentive as Peggy's mother spoke. Watching this scene unfold reminded Peggy so much of her own childhood, she felt speechless as she watched them.

            Peggy smiled now as she remembered all this. She checked her watch and felt herself swallow. She ought not to be nervous, and yet she could not seem to help it. She leaned against the wall, until she spotted Angie. She had her coat and scarf and sunglasses on, which gave her away as a person trying remain anonymous. She did not seem famous, however, because she carried her own bags. They were new and large, but there were only two of them. Peggy stood up from the wall where she was leaning and made her way over to her. They were both grinning when Peggy approached Angie.

            "Welcome home, Miss Sutton," Peggy said.

            "That's Martinelli to your kind. I'm outside the bus' these days," Angie teased her in a haughty tone. Peggy gave a gesture and a sound to mock being slightly affronted by her own mistake. She reached to take a bag from Angie's hand.

            "Excuse me, Miss Martinelli," Peggy said. They hugged now that each of them had a free arm. "Welcome back to the world of us common folk then." Angie laughed. They could only manage the lightest sort of chatting, as they made their way out of the crowded airport and into the parking lot to the car.  

            As they got in the car, Angie took off her coat. She pulled off her scarf and glasses once they were inside. She reached over and gave Peggy a more proper hug. She stretched her back and seemed more relieved in this moment than Peggy thought a person's body could convey. Peggy immediately spotted a bruise on Angie's neck just above her collar bone.

            "Did you get hurt?" Peggy asked. Angie looked over curiously. Peggy nodded towards her neck.

            "Oh, yeah," Angie said. She laughed. "I got into it with Richard." Peggy had started the ignition and turned towards Angie and froze for a moment.

            "You got into a physical fight with your manager?" Peggy asked.

            "Former manager," Angie stressed. "And yes." Peggy put the car into gear and back them out of the space. When she got it out of reverse, she leaned back a bit.

            "You're not gonna' ask me?" Angie said.

            "Ask you what?" Peggy said.

            "If I won," Angie said. Peggy laughed a bit.

            "I was quelling an urge to ask you where to find him and sorting through my contacts out that way," Peggy said .

            "I got my man on it," Angie said. Peggy looked over just a bit worried. "In a legal kind of way." She rolled down her window a little and breathed in the air. The plane air must have been stuffy, Peggy assumed. "You'll be pleased to know that I did not start the fight, and that I did win. This hurts a lot worse than the neck," Angie said. She held up her knuckles to Peggy. Peggy leaned over and looked closely and saw they were bruised.

            "Is that from contact?" Peggy asked.

            "With his left eye," Angie said. "I'd have given him another, but there were people pulling us away by then."

            "Getting out of LA is a serious business," Peggy said.

            "I'll say," Angie responded. "My job is getting back into New York now."

            "Where am I taking you by the way?" Peggy asked her. She knew that Angie had worked something out with Howard. Angie led her to one of his places, and Peggy felt a little relieved when it was not the one they had lived in those years before. She wondered if he still owned it nowadays.

 

            Peggy had only stayed a short time that first day. She did not really comprehend that Angie was home until Angie called her later in the week. Somehow talking to her over the phone and realizing how close she was made it register for Peggy that she was back. Instead of talking when she called, they just set up a time to meet with each other in person.

            Peggy found herself remembering many nuances and small things about Angie that she had quite forgotten. Angie took command over her situation in New York in a casual sort of way. Peggy remembered how much Angie had taught her about searching out the life that she wanted. Within the first week, she had reconnected with most of her New York friends. She considered multiple agents and settled on Frances's agent, a woman named Evelyn Connolly. She negotiated a one-year contract only, which was unheard of apparently. Angie explained more about the industry to Peggy. Everything Angie was doing was out of the ordinary, including her choice for a new agent.

            "I have an easier time being assertive with women," Angie explained it to Peggy. "And Evelyn's not greedy. She seems very mellow about the whole thing. She thinks it'll be easy for her to get me what I want. A Hollywood name draws crowds, so as long as you can make them seem tolerable, you can get gigs on the theater scene."

            Peggy eventually asked Angie whether she owned anything more than her luggage. She said she got rid of everything. Apparently, she had not been attached to a place in a long time. She described the houses she had lived in LA as "after-hours sets." She took on a role in a production quickly. She was much slower, Peggy found, about choosing herself a place. And quick again to move when she found one. Then slow again about filling it with the right furniture.

            When Peggy first visited, she felt surprised by how simple the place was. The building had belonged to a high profile government official of some kind in the years before, and it was somewhat hidden in back of a large complex of extremely expensive apartments that each took up an entire floor of the building. There were four bedrooms on two floors, two full baths, a half bath, a large kitchen, a tiny cluster of garden plots along a stone walk with a little place to sit under a pear tree, and a couple of larger, open sitting rooms in the place. Angie described the place as being no more than she could handle on her own.

            After she settled into her new life, Angie had a lot more to say about her former life in LA. Peggy thought that was strange, and yet the more she explained, the more sense it made. She had been working constantly. And she said that she thought that drinking so much in the scene there had changed how she was thinking day to day. She was not disappointed by her return to theater work in New York, Peggy was happy to find, even though it seemed exhausting, as it always had, to Peggy.

            "It's more about the craft of how to carry the story and make it your own. It's not all about how to move money place to place and make sure you got a nice handful of it for yourself, "as Angie explained it.

            Angie talked a lot about craft over the next few months, and almost not at all about money. She connected with a couple of the acting schools in New York then. She taught a few courses and helped out with a few more. She started talking about money again, as if from the other side of things.

            "The acting business draws people from all over who got more or less no chance of ever making anything," Angie said. She called her own success "luck." Peggy protested.

            "Oh, that's not true, Angie. You got lots of talent," Peggy said. Angie shrugged this off. She seemed very casual about it.

            "A lot of people got talent," Angie said. "I also got a break. All the talent in the world wasn't going to get me into the scene. There's luck involved, and a good bit of that luck in this country is tied right up with money. It shouldn't be, and it doesn't have to be, but it is. If I hadn't met you, I wouldn’t have made it. Unless by some kind of freak circumstances I can't imagine now.

            "It should not be such a free-for-all. You can train talent into refined skill with some schooling, but a lot of people never get that kind of support. I want to figure out how to get some more of us who wouldn't have made it into the bus' to balance it out even a little bit."

            Angie came up with ideas for how to do this over the coming couple of months. She considered scholarship through the schools, but she didn't trust the politics there. Peggy got her in touch with women who ran non-government affiliated organizations, and she wound up working with a separate foundation to set up an endowment. That way the recipients could choose their own school and control their own lives. She later moved a young actress name Patricia Owens who was already getting small roles into her own place.

            Peggy realized at some point that she and Angie's relationship had a sort of momentum to it still. She had imagined that, like with any other friend, she would be more involved with Angie as she settled in compared to later, as Angie would need her more during that early stage of reestablishing herself. The months were drawing them closer, however. Peggy had lunch or drinks with Angie a few times a week. Sometimes, they still called one another in the evenings and talked.

            They would sit out at the small table behind Angie's house under the pear tree when it was fine enough. The space had an amazingly private feel to it, especially for being so close to the center of the city. They talked about practically everything there.

            "I think Patricia quite fancies you," Peggy said one day as they sat out on a warm day in late fall. She had been considering mentioning it for a while. She actually wondered if Patricia and Angie were already involved. She suspected Angie would say something about it, but she might not given their history.  Angie gave a sort of thoughtful look at Peggy's comment.

            "I'm sure she does," Angie said quite calm.

            "Is she interested in women?" Peggy asked. She could not find a more precise way to say what she meant. Something that included desire and choice, but she knew Angie would understand what she meant.

            "Exclusively," Angie said. "That's how Frances and Jill met her, and how I met her through them."

            "Are you interested?" Peggy said.

            "No," Angie said with great certainty. She looked at Peggy for a long moment before she spoke. She took a light drag from her cigarette. "She's lovely and all. A real looker and a real good person besides. A great actress, too, truly, my God. She's amazing to watch when she's at work."

            "You're just not interested?" Peggy asked. Angie reached across her face to scratch at the other eyebrow with the hand holding her cigarette. She sat back a bit.

            "I would be, probably," Angie said. "But it just wouldn't ever be equal would it?" Peggy thought that over for a moment.

            "Because of how much she likes you?" Peggy asked.

            "No," Angie said, quite dismissive of this.

            "Because of the money?" Peggy asked.

            "Money, age, fame – all of it. There's nothing to tip the scales back the other way. There would never be the same level of vulnerability. She would lose a lot if she broke with me. I'd just lose her. That's not nothing, but it's not the same. It makes it feel off. I can't get interested in the idea. I want equality, you know?" She gave a sort of shrug as she said this last part.

            Peggy made a severe sound of agreement. Angie took another drag from her cigarette. She sat thinking a moment, then she laughed a bit. Peggy gave her a curious look.

            "It's funny to me to hear you assume feelings first in considering equality," Angie said. Peggy thought this over for a minute. It did seem somewhat out of character. Peggy was usually more practical. Equalities were denied or upheld for reasons far beyond individual choice and sentiment. Peggy grew amused herself.

            "I suppose I get a little too focused on the individuals when I think of romance," Peggy said. "I used to think when I was younger that you could assert your equality with anyone just by feeling it."

            "You have shown me how much that counts," Angie admitted.

            "Now I think I recognize much more how vulnerable each of us really is to forces far beyond ourselves merely," Peggy said. "Perhaps I still think there's a great capacity for what people can do in a relationship if they are both determined."

            "You've shown me plenty of that, as well," Angie said. Peggy gave her a curious look. "Us," Angie said. "And also you and Daniel." Peggy gave a small sort of smile. Somehow, Angie's opinion of her marriage counted much more than the opinions of others. "You mind if I ask how you two worked things out?" Angie said.

            "I don't mind," Peggy said. "Although I've never really tried explaining it to anyone before."

            "I don't want to pry," Angie said.

            "It's not a confidence, really. We haven't been private so much as on your own," Peggy said. "Only a couple of my other friends are married."

            "Is he different than his family?" Angie asked. Peggy laughed.

            "Quite," Peggy said. "Although I suppose he's quite different than anyone. He's very close with his sister Christina. Her children, as well. Her oldest, Michael, is seventeen, so they're even closer now that he's more an adult."

            "So he was already sort of a dad when you met him?" Angie asked.

            "He was," Peggy said with a soft laugh. "When I told him, before we were married that I wanted children, he asked, 'How many?' He looked relieved when I said two. He said something like, 'It'll be easy to keep track of that many.'" Angie really laughed at that. Peggy thought she could understand it better given her own childhood.

            "I didn't know he had decided to give the children my last name, until I saw Lynn's birth certificate. We hadn't discussed it, and I just assumed they'd be Sousas. I asked him about it, and he said he thought they would naturally be more connected to me. Some sort of ideas about maternity," Peggy said.

            "Do you think they are?" Angie asked.

            "I don't, actually," Peggy said. "He was very involved right from the beginning."

            "Did he change diapers and feed 'em and stuff?" Angie asked. Peggy laughed at this.

            "Of course he did," Peggy said. "He was also… just… curious about them." She didn't quite know how to explain that to Angie. "He wanted to know who they were," she said.  

            Peggy told Angie a story of finding Daniel tickling Steven when he was about five months old. He would tickle his belly, and Steven would laugh, and then Daniel would laugh. Peggy came into the room, and Daniel turned to her.

            "He laughs like a grown man!" Daniel said to her in delight. He tickled Steven, and, sure enough, a deep, belly laugh came out of him that sounded far older than an infant boy's laugh usually would sound. Peggy watched as Daniel gave exactly the same laugh from the exact same place in his body.

            "That was one of those moments where you know for sure you have no regrets about having married someone or having had children with them," Peggy said. Angie smiled softly at this. She finished her cigarette.

            "Was he on board from the start with you keeping your last name?" Angie said.

            "He didn't mind at all," Peggy said. She thought again about Daniel's difference compared to his family. She told Angie a story from their wedding day.

            Peggy didn't care about a wedding, and Daniel didn't want to spend money on it, as he was obsessing over the idea of getting a large enough boat for their children to fit in. They conceded to a marriage with the one Catholic priest who would agree to marry them in order to satisfy Daniel's family, but they had not considered touching the wedding vows. When the priest asked Peggy to give oath to "obey" Daniel, he had laughed out loud in the church. He said later on that only Peggy's poise in the moment, as she refused to even crack a smile, saved them from being absolutely ostracized from Daniel's family.

            Angie thought this story was hilarious. Peggy's thoughts wandered over the rest of her wedding day. She had forgotten about the incident with the vows when she and Daniel piled into the car that night to head home. Daniel's father had insisted on buying them an expensive car for the night. There was a pane of glass between the back and the front seat like a taxi, but it did not have an opening. The driver already knew where he was going. He tipped his cap to them in the rearview mirror.

            "I feel like we're being kidnapped," Daniel said.

            "Just trust the total stranger with the fine hat, darling," Peggy joked.

            "That's not what my parents taught me," Daniel said.

            "There, there," Peggy said and patted his thigh above his false leg where he could feel it. She could not help but scan the driver for any signs of stress herself before she sat back.

            "I've got my first command for you," Daniel said. Peggy laughed immediately.

            "What's that?" Peggy said as she took the bait to humor him.

            "Never obey any command I give you from now on," Daniel said.

            "Yes, dear," Peggy said in a saccharine tone.

            "Good," Daniel said. He shook his head incredulously. "I didn't pick Margaret Carter to be obeyed," he said shaking his head. He chuckled again, and Peggy knew he was thinking of the priest. She had held in every instinct to smile when she saw the grave look on his face as he stared at Daniel.

            "How is this marriage going to work?" Peggy joked.

            "I guess I'll just have to take orders," Daniel said. "Someone has to be the dictator. Otherwise how will we get anything done?"

            "Democracy is a fantasy of the naïve," Peggy said. Daniel gave a grave sort of "hmph" of agreement.

            "Communism, you mean," he said. He made a false huff of disdainful laughter and added with a scoff, "Shared power."

            Peggy had her hand resting on his thigh still. She noticed the fine feel of the fabric of his tuxedo, as she contemplated what kind of work it would take to get him out of it. She had not seen him get into it and could only take a guess. She found herself distracted with wondering if they were both very tired underneath all this energy and the number of drinks they'd had.

            "You going to let me keep you up late?" Peggy asked.

            "Sure am," Daniel said. "I'm intimidated by the idea of trying to get that thing off." He meant her dress.

            "I watched it go on," Peggy said. "I have a strategic plan."

            "Grand," Daniel said.

            Peggy sat smiling over her memories while Angie finished having her laugh. She thought over their earlier conversation again. She thought of a new connection.

            "He only ever asked me to give up something once," Peggy said. Angie looked up and listened closely to her again. "I was pregnant with Lynn and still doing freelance work as a undercover operative when I could find any work worth doing. The SSR hired me out fairly often, but there were some politically neutral cases, as well. I took a dangerous job helping a man Howard knew who had been robbed of a couple of patent designs. It was nothing too rough, but I got in a fight with a couple of men. One had a pistol, and by the time I got that away, the other one who had a knife had got in close." Peggy leaned back and pointed at the place on her stomach.

            "He got a little of the blade in my stomach before I caught his arm. Just an inch, and inch and a half maybe. But it was right there, and even in the moment I thought myself about how close that was. That was tiny Lynn in there, and I hadn't really thought about it."

            Peggy remembered how her own moment of concern had faded out. She was mostly annoyed to discover that the muscle that had been partly severed was apparently integrally involved with her orgasm. She had to get quite innovative in their love making over the next couple of weeks. Daniel's concern over the injury seemed to deepen as the days passed, however.

            "Daniel took it more seriously than I did. He asked me a little while later if I would be willing to give up dangerous work until the kids were old enough to remember me," Peggy said.

            "Not permanently?" Angie asked with a delighted and amazed sort of grin.

            "No," Peggy said. "He'd know that I would never agree to that. He was really more concerned over their early development than anything. He thought they would have some resilience as long as they could remember me, you know, that they wouldn't have before that age," Peggy explained.

            "How long did it last?" Angie said.

            "Four years about," Peggy said. She remembered back and told Angie another story of how her "safety spell" had ended. Peggy and Daniel were awoken one night by a sound of glass breaking. They children were asleep, and Peggy got up and went down. She turned on the kitchen light. Two men had broken into their house. One, a big guy, was carrying a crowbar, and a smaller, younger one was carrying a hammer. Peggy surmised in an instant that neither of them had had a moment's training in any sort of combat. They were too young for the war, and too messy to be real criminals.

            "You've got to be joking," Peggy had said aloud.

            "Get back lady! Go upstairs!" the big guy growled. Peggy had already descended the stairs and crossed over half the kitchen to draw nearer to him. She stood casually blocking any access they might gain to the rest of the house where the children were sleeping.

            "You gentlemen really ought to go," Peggy said. Daniel had come down the stairs part way, and Peggy saw that he had a sweater on and his hand in the pocket, no doubt holding a pistol. Neither man noticed, which made her shake her head at them.

            "Get back, buddy! Don't try to start nothing!" the big guy said. Daniel gave a demure look.

            "Either of you got a gun?" Daniel asked in a polite tone. The two looked at each other.

            "We might!" the smaller one said.

            "That a threat?" the big guy asked Daniel.

            "Nope," Daniel said. "You got a threat standing right in front of you."

            "You better come get your lady," the younger man said. Peggy noticed that he sounded genuinely worried. She softened up just the slightest bit, as she sized the two of them up. Daniel could not contain his laughter.

            "You trying to threaten us?" the big man asked Daniel again.

            "Nope," Daniel said again. "I intend to just stand here and let the lady handle it." Peggy thought that was fair, as it gave them a sort of starting chance. A fair warning, she thought in a way. They both stared at her.

            Peggy waited for one of them to make the smallest move, then she broke the smaller man's nose on the edge of the stove. He fell down and dropped the hammer. She caught the crowbar, after it was swung wildly more in a threat than with real intent. She hit the bigger man across the side of the face with a cast iron pan from the stove, then sat it down again. He slumped down, holding his face. She had grabbed it by the side and not the handle, otherwise she might have split the side of his head open. She stood with the crowbar and sent the hammer across the kitchen floor.

            Daniel went calmly and called the police. He came back and stood in the kitchen with Peggy. Everyone was silent for a moment. Peggy kept an eye on the two men. She turned then to Daniel.

            "I don't suppose this is a good time to tell you I miss work," Peggy said. Daniel gave her a shrug and a slow blink that spoke volumes. He sighed and scratched the back of his head in a sort of defeat. He was quiet for a long moment.

            "Can I blame you?" he said then as if to himself.

            Lynn had woken up, they saw, and Daniel gave Peggy his sweater with the pistol in the pocket. Peggy put it on. She got the two men up and into chairs at the table. She got herself a glass of water, then broke out some ice for the both of them. The bigger one actually said, "Thanks." They were in rough shape. There would be a good deal of blood to clean after they had gone from the smaller man's broken nose. She felt the slightest bit bad about it.

            As they waited for the cops, Peggy observed them more closely. They were addicts of some sort. Peggy stepped away to let Daniel talk to the police. She whispered an idea to him as he passed. Daniel played the buddy towards the cops as a government man in a way Peggy could not have. As a result, they didn't pressed charges, but the two men were kept in their cells for 72-hours. That was more than enough punishment given their injuries and the withdrawal they would have faced. That also gave them some slight chance of getting away from whatever they were using, Peggy thought, as they had to walk out sober.

            Angie loved that story, although she did not quite agree with letting the men off the hook. They would be more dangerous to someone else, she argued. Peggy thought that was fair, though she still didn't quite regret her decision.

            Peggy remembered waking up at 5a.m. that morning. She exercised and felt very energized and excited by the idea of returning to work again. She woke Daniel up after she showered, and they made a sort of overeager love before breakfast. She remembered Daniel letting his arms fall over his head and onto the pillow, as he caught his breath.

            "There are going to be pros and cons to this," he joked. Peggy left this detail out as she told the story to Angie. It made her smile to remember it.

            "Do you two rough each other up?" Angie asked. Peggy looked up at her and felt her cheeks blush given her own thoughts at the moment. She grinned for a moment.

            "You should probably clarify for me precisely what it is that you're asking," Peggy said. Angie laughed, as well, then, and rubbed her eye to hide her face a moment. She always loved it when Peggy made suggestive comments, and that certainly had not changed.

            "I'm not trying to strike a comparison to you and me in my mind, surprisingly," Angie said. That got Peggy blushing even more, and she shook her head at having been had. Angie could always get her if she wanted, she knew. She knew Peggy too well. "I'd rather live with the mystery. I mean do you like, fight each other? For fun or whatever?"

            "You mean do we train with each other?" Peggy asked.            

            "Yeah," Angie said with a shrug that meant "whatever you call it."

            "We have, yes. Out in the backyard. It's fenced in, so the neighbors can't see. We don't want the children to see us fighting, though. They might get confused or scared or something."

            "Who wins?" Angie asked. Peggy laughed. She considered what Angie was really asking.  

            "We both do. And if we really fought, no one would. I could take Daniel in a fight if he didn't catch me off my guard, if that's what you're asking. It's about as appealing as the idea of fighting you," Peggy said. "We don't really fight. I would never hit Daniel. That would wreck me for good."

            "Think he'd hit you if he could?" Angie asked.

            "No," Peggy said severely. "Not in a million years. He didn't pick me by accident. He's as invested in equality as I am. I trust him with our children as much as I trust myself. More so in some ways, I think." Angie tipped her chin up a bit to ask "how so." So Peggy explained briefly. "He's very good with their feelings. I can't figure out what the meaning of it is sometimes. He doesn't feel a need to have it explained the same way."

            Peggy told Angie a story about when the children were being made to do bomb drills at school. Peggy happened to overhear Lynn telling Daniel about it one night, as he put her to bed. She stood in the doorway and listened. Lynn had just been describing the drill to Daniel, and in response, he told her a long story about a Russian father who loved his Russian daughter and was tucking her into bed while she was at school. He explained about how the Russians did not want their children to get hurt, and so they would not want their country to hurt people like them in the United States. Peggy only understood after Daniel's story and the change in Lynn's tone that she was telling him about the drills, because she had been scared. She thought that Lynn told Daniel and not Peggy about it for a reason.

            "He sounds like a champion dad," Angie said.

            "He is," Peggy said. "He had practice of a sorts with Christian's children before ours. She has three sons and a daughter. They're all very involved. He would have married me even if I didn't want to have kids.

            "I think we got lucky with money," Peggy said. "My work pays awfully well. I have Howard to thank, strangely, for that. A lot of Daniel's income has always gone to Christina and her children. He would have been torn between the costs of two families, I think, if I had not been able to change the game with my income."

            "Makes you equals in a way," Angie said.

            "It is sort of an underlying foundation of our equality, yes," Peggy said. "And the other complications work out better because of it." Angie shook her head and lit another cigarette for herself. She gave a severe sort of nod.

            "The way you talk makes me think about getting with a man," Angie said. Peggy laughed a little at this. "A tiny bit anyways."

            "Daniel sort of took me by surprise. In a slow, casual revealing sort of a way," Peggy said.

            "I'll just keep my mind open," Angie concluded.

 

            Peggy finally got plans together to go see one of Angie's plays as winter started to set in fully. Daniel wanted to go, and she had gotten two tickets for them. The SSR heated up in the weeks leading up to night of the show, and Peggy went with Patricia instead. They came home to Angie's house afterwards. Frances and Jill were there, and they all enjoyed drinking and talking together for a long while.

            Frances and Jill wanted to go out to late night clubs, and Patricia eagerly went with them. Angie said she was too tired, and she and Peggy sat around in the quiet after they left. They went to the kitchen and ate some sandwiches. Peggy drank a tall glass of water. She felt the few glasses of wine from earlier start to clear. A while later, they sort of moseyed towards the living room and the front door, both reluctant to end the night, but feeling it draw towards a close.

            "Thanks for coming to see me," Angie said. Peggy was always surprised that these kinds of things meant so much to Angie. Peggy had always had supportive family, however, and Angie had not.

            "You were wonderful," Peggy said genuinely. Angie laughed very faintly with delight and a little bit of embarrassment.

            "I'm back on my game these days, especially tonight," Angie said. "It helps when you got good friends in the audience." Angie's character in the play was entangled in a doomed love affair that was salvaged by happenstance near the end.

            "I fully believed for nearly three hours that you were desperately in love with a man," Peggy said.

            "A master of my craft," Angie teased as she raised an eyebrow. "Desire is an easy emotion for me, though."

            "Is it?" Peggy asked curiously.

            "Mm-hm," Angie said. "I just channel my feelings about you and send the whole room into a frenzy."

            Peggy felt a sort of weight settle into her own heart. She had just drawn on her coat. She looked closely at Angie's face. Angie had meant the comment to be received lightly, Peggy could see. She stood now smiling with her arms crossed in front of her.

            "All that pent up longing," Angie joked. Her eyes flicked away from Peggy for just a moment and came back again. She stood there very still with a soft smile on her face.

            Peggy grew utterly fixated on the expression held in Angie's face. She usually kept it hidden, but there was no doubt in that instant that Angie still felt the same way about Peggy. All that desire was still there, right under the surface. And seeing it made Peggy feel as if her entire body were altered into another one. This one that wanted Angie just as badly as she wanted her.

            Peggy leaned in and brought her lips to Angie's. They kissed harder immediately as if by instinct. Within seconds, they were beginning to kiss quite passionately. In just another moment, Peggy would have put her arms around Angie and drawn her up against herself.

            Angie pulled away from Peggy suddenly. She put her hand up in front of her mouth at once. Peggy saw that her fingers tremble in the instant that it took for them to really stand separate.

            "Stop, Peggy," Angie said in a voice that spoke weakly but in earnest. She stood rigid, as Peggy got her wits about her again. She stepped back, and Angie almost pushed her back, as if trying to help her gain her composure. Angie looked up at her face, somewhere between weeping and an all-encompassing panic. "Go, honey," Angie said. She squeezed Peggy's arm. Then she turned her eyes away from Peggy.

            Peggy felt her jaw clenched so tight that it was aching. She took her bag from the table and stepped out the door at once. She stood on the other side, stunned into complete stillness for a moment. She heard Angie begin weeping on the other side, as she assumed Peggy had walked away.

            Peggy turned and looked at the door handle. It was not locked. She could open it. She pictured in her mind what would happen. She would take Angie into her arms. There was no doubt they would kiss again. They would end up in bed and probably find they could make love until morning.

            Peggy exerted such a force of will to get herself to keep walking that her first steps came somewhat staggeringly. She practically tore the car door open. She sat down inside and leaned her forehead into the steering wheel. She felt her eyes fill with tears, and she was almost consumed with a rush of anger. At first, it wanted to go out and find some enemy. There wasn't one there, so it turned against herself. She felt herself to be an utter failure. Angie salvaged the loss and practically pushed her out of the house, as she proved herself once again to be the best of friends.

            Peggy drove home, and along the way a sort of haunting stillness came over her. She could not decipher a single feeling in her body. Her step on the walk fell a bit hard, as if she had been off on a mission that had gone violent. She came inside. She got a glass of water. Her hands weren't even shaking when she looked at them.

            She heard Daniel come in. He had pajamas on, as it was late. She wondered a moment if he were staying up for her, but she knew that work was keeping him up of late. She was standing rigidly, as she leaned over the sink. She felt his hand on her shoulder, over where her bullet scars would be underneath her coat.

            "Hey," he said gently. She turned to him stiffly. She turned away before she spoke.

            "I kissed, Angie," Peggy said. He stood silent a moment with his hand still on her back. "It won't happen again," she said. Her voice sounded hard and challenging, as if she were about to fight someone.

            She had a moment of noticing how the sink looked strange, as if her vision were a bit distorted. She felt an irrational urge to smash the glass into it to make it hold still. She took the last drink of water and put the glass down in the sink instead. She stared at it now, and finally felt her own emotions returning. She felt scared and sad, mostly, by her brief estimation.

            Daniel was still standing with his hand on her shoulder. He leaned back into the counter. She glanced over to see him looking down at the floor in what appeared to be deep thought. He turned towards her when she looked at him. He just looked at her face with a sort of deep consideration. Peggy shook her head.

            "What is wrong with me?" she said. Daniel looked a bit shocked at this. He actually blanched a bit at her words.

            "Nothing is wrong with you, Peggy," he said. She kept shaking her head and stared at the darkened window, as if she could see something there. She felt her hands gripping the edge of the sink.

            Lynn came into the kitchen, as she had heard Peggy and wanted her. Peggy gave Daniel one last look and went to her. She knelt down to hug her and say hello.

            "Mommy, are you sad?" Lynn asked with her childlike empathy. She touched Peggy's face.

            "No, darling. I'm quite all right," Peggy said. She picked her up as she stood. "You ready for bed?" she asked her. Lynn sighed deeply.  

            "I don't want to go to bed tonight," Lynn admitted. The severity of her tone made Peggy want to smile.

            "Well, you just have to get in under the covers," Peggy said. "You don't have to go to sleep." Lynn nodded. Peggy gave Daniel a look that said she was taking her off to bed. He nodded once. He remained in the kitchen, probably still thinking about what she had said.

            Peggy herself grew distracted. Steven was wide awake, as well, which shocked her. He was a sheer champion at sleep. She piled with them both into Lynn's bed and got in with them. She got invested in reading them a long portion of a book of Hans Christian Andersen stories. They had to spend a minute or two on each page with the illustrations.

            When they finally tired out, she tucked them in and rubbed their backs for a few minutes. She left them practically out after turning off the beside lamp. She wondered what had kept them up, and thought perhaps it was her absence. Daniel usually reported that they were fine when she was away. Yet knowing she would come home late that night may have inclined them to staying up waiting.

            Peggy found Daniel already in bed. She got ready herself to join him and wished she were already asleep. He seemed quieter than usual, and she did not know what to say. Peggy got into bed herself and read for a short while. Daniel finally put his book down on the side table. He normally would have turned off his light and waited for Peggy to finish reading before coming over to her side of the bed. He ran his knuckles lightly across her arm. She did not really want to talk about it all, though she felt more obligated. She felt herself shy and also astounded by her own frustration and shame.

            "Would you tell me about it?" Daniel asked.  

            "There's nothing to tell," Peggy said. Daniel seemed very uncomfortable with her, as well as her answer. She really was being quite rigid about all of this.

            "This all seems really serious to me, Peggy," Daniel said.

            "I am taking it seriously, darling," Peggy responded with great incredulity. She felt her own eyes well up with tears, as if she were being accused unjustly. She looked over at Daniel with a sort of challenging if desperate look.

            "I know you are," he said. "And that's not what I meant. I mean your feelings."

            "I cannot change how I feel," Peggy said in a tone of extreme self-defense. She felt uncertain whether she might weep or grow incredibly angry. She felt that she might do both.

            "I'm not asking you to," Daniel said. He spoke softly, as he tried to bring her back down. He reached and took her hand, as if to draw her out more and into this conversation. She was misunderstanding his meaning, she realized. She let her book fall aside.

            "What do you think I'm going to say?" Daniel asked her strangely. Peggy blinked several times and felt somewhat stunned by the question. She was not sure what she thought he was going to say.

            "I'm not going anywhere, and I'm not starting things up again with Angie," Peggy said. Daniel looked at her and seemed somewhat amazed and also confused by Peggy. He thought for a moment before he said anything.

            "That's not what I'm worried about anymore," Daniel said shaking his head mildly. "Quite the opposite actually." Peggy felt that she really might weep now. She felt he was about to bring up something she did not want talked about out in the open. "You are obviously trying _not_ to start things up with her," he said. Peggy felt her breath rush out at this. "Why do you think it's so hard?" Peggy stared at his face in a sort of desperation. She did not know what to say.

            "It just is," Peggy said. She kept staring at Daniel. He still seemed very deep in thought.

            "Peggy, I'm afraid you're going to break your own heart then try to love us all with it," Daniel said. "I don't think you should do that." He was as serious as Peggy had ever seen him. "People go crazy, Peggy, when they're kept away from the people they love."

            "I'm not being kept away, am I? We have a fine friendship," Peggy said.

            "Sure," Daniel said calmly, "But it's not in the way what you would want it to be."

            "It just can't be," Peggy said as if this were obvious.

            "Why not?" Daniel asked. A long, blank silence was all Peggy had to offer. He shrugged. "I'm not trying to make you choose."

            "How would that work?" Peggy asked. Daniel laughed at her. She felt her jaw flinch.

            "You're a strategic genius," Daniel said as if to match her combative mood a little bit. He gave her a look of challenge even if it was soft. "And you've had two or three jobs and two kids going for nearly a decade. Why is this idea so intimidating?"

            "There are a lot more feelings involved," Peggy said before she considered what she would answer. She felt that she was more overwhelmed than Daniel. "Someone is bound to get hurt," she said. Daniel looked incredulous himself now.

            "Can you tell me that you're feeling fine now?" he asked. He gave a small pause and added, "How about Angie?" Peggy had no answer to make.

            Daniel lay back on his pillow. He had a hand on his chest. He settled himself into down more the bed. He reached over to take Peggy's hand again. Peggy watched as he entwined their fingers. She figured out after a minute from his body language that he did not mean to say anything else. He was just worried, she realized.

            He had given her a sort of shock. Peggy could not seem to wrap her mind around the idea of loving two people at the same time. She felt overwhelmed by the mere concept. She had started this, she realized. Not in her right mind or on her own terms, but she set this all off. She tried to picture what approaching it again on her own terms and in her right mind might look like.

            Daniel was right, and Peggy really did want both, of course. What would actually happen if Peggy tried to get both? She could imagine nothing other than disaster. Clearly, that was not what Daniel was imagining. A long silence passed, in which Daniel lay beside her quietly, and Peggy ran through her thoughts.

            "Do you really think that could work?" Peggy asked him. Her voice came out soft and quite vulnerable. Daniel turned to look over her face. He held her hand a bit tighter in his own.

            "The guys at the office," he said, catching Peggy a little bit off-guard as he started up, "Used to think I was a complete joker for harboring a thought about trying to get with you. Any one of them would have jumped at a chance if they saw it." Peggy gave a scoff of disbelief, and Daniel glanced over at her.

            "Not because they really knew you or cared about you, but because of how _much_ you were. You understand? You were too much for me they thought. I wasn't supposed to want that much, and I was supposed to feel ashamed if I did and just let it drop. Thompson was the absolute worst. He thought I was a clown. It made it hard to hold onto how I felt or thought I could feel if we got closer." Daniel was quiet for a long moment, as Peggy thought about what he had said. "I don't think you should feel ashamed, Peggy, if you want too much." He gave her a long and quite serious look.

            Peggy started at his face for a moment, then she felt herself begin to cry. She put her hands into her face and wept for a just moment. How many more times would she weep over this? she thought. She lay her head on Daniel's shoulder, and he wrapped his arms around her. She pushed the tears away from her eyes and sniffed. She felt Daniel's heartbeat under the palm of her hand and moved it about his body in order to feel it more fully.

            "I don’t know what to say, darling," Peggy said.

            "Stop thinking," Daniel said. Peggy laughed against his chest and felt him chuckle in response. "Let's talk again tomorrow," he said.

            Peggy relinquished at that. She lay against him and let the peace of their bed wash over her. She felt through her own thoughts and pushed them all away. They would keep until the next day.

Peggy awoke at 5a.m. She went down into the living room and exercised. She noticed how her body felt weak. Her muscles shook long before they were fully fatigued. It was from her emotions, she knew. She cut her usual routine a bit short. She showered and came down to make a cup of tea.

            She saw then that it was snowing. Peggy stood and drank her cup of tea at the kitchen window. This was the first storm of the season. Before long, the storm picked up and large snowflakes were falling thickly and accumulating on the ground.  

            Lynn would want to see this, Peggy realized. She went quietly into their room and patted her back and whispered her name a few times. Lynn turned over.

            "Want to see the first snow, darling?" Peggy said quietly. Lynn sat up at once and crawled out of the bed. Steven rolled over with a groan, and Peggy rubbed his back briefly. Peggy came than and stood in the window with Lynn, who stared out in silence. A long while passed. The flakes got bigger until they were as big as quarters at least.

            "Should we wake up Steven?" Lynn said. Peggy glanced over at him. She did not think he would wake up.

            "You can try if you like, darling," Peggy said. Lynn went and patted Steven softly on his back. She leaned in a bit to whisper his name.

            "Stevie," she said a few times. He turned over with a fussy sort of movement. "Want to see the snow?"

            "Is it falling?" Peggy heard him say. She smiled, as she thought this meant that he did not want to get up for snow that was already fallen and merely on the ground. She heard Lynn tell him it was and encourage him. He wanted to get up, Peggy thought. So she came over.

            "Shall I carry you to the window, darling?" Peggy said. Steven held out his arms at once. Peggy bent down and gathered him up carefully. He put his arms around her neck. They all three stood in the window then for a long while. Peggy was not sure how awake Steven was really, as he leaned his forehead into her neck. He surprised her a bit by pointing when the flakes seemed to suddenly double in size.

            "They're friends," he said. Peggy considered this strange statement for a moment. She realized that he thought the snowflakes were sticking together, which was right.

            "Yes," she said. "The wind up in the sky must be pushing them about and bringing them together." Lynn stared up at her as she said this then looked out again.

            Peggy felt astonished herself by the miracle of this first snowfall. Eventually, when they got somewhat chilled, Peggy piled them into Steven's bed, which was under the window where they could see a little. Lynn was still staring out as Peggy left the room.

            Upstairs again, Peggy felt suddenly inclined to wake Daniel. She thought it over for a moment. She came and sat on his side of the bed and put her hand on his shoulder. He awoke instantly and turned over.

            "There's a beautiful snow falling," she explained. He lay breathing for just a moment, then laboriously, he sat himself up. He went to the window, using his own balance and his chair, so he could see. Peggy came and stood with him.

            "Look at that," he whispered. "Did you show the kids?" he asked.

            "I did," Peggy said.

            "Did Steven wake up for it?" he asked.

            "He did," Peggy said. She put her arm around him and took a little of his weight, and they stared out for a while. Daniel slipped off to the bathroom. Peggy stood and looked out.

            When Daniel came back, he put his arms around Peggy. He kissed her cheek, and when she turned he kissed her lips lightly. He had brushed his teeth she noticed.

            "Are you still angry?" he asked.

            "What? No," Peggy said. She felt uncertain for a moment what he meant. She had not meant to seem angry. Not at him, certainly.

            "Will you come back to bed?" he asked. Peggy turned more towards him and uncrossed her arms and put her hands to his chest. She nodded agreement.

            Daniel got them both under the covers again with the bed still warm from his body not long before. He lay on his side facing Peggy and kissed her. They made love with one another with a sort of quiet tenderness that Peggy felt could hardly be named in words.

            As they lay there after, Peggy assumed that Daniel was dozing, as he had long been so still. A sudden movement of his arm indicated that he was wide awake. He rubbed at his lips, and Peggy heard his faint beard rasp just barely in the dim room. He turned towards Peggy and touched her face.

            "Are you thinking about last night?" he said.

            "I'm trying not to," Peggy said.

            "Is that wise?" Daniel asked. Peggy shifted uncomfortably on the bed and looked up at the ceiling. She closed her eyes and had the irrational wish that she could be out of this conversation somehow.

            "You're the strongest willed person I've ever met," Daniel said. His tone was very matter-of-fact. Peggy did not know what he meant by it. He turned to look at her. "I'm afraid of what's going to happen if you turn your will against yourself."

            He turned onto his side towards her. He ran his hand over Peggy. She felt her eyes well, as she felt softened by his touch. She could not push her feelings away, she knew, when he was touching her and trying to coax them out. She took a deep breath.

            "Our self-control is the only thing that makes us moral," Peggy said.

            "That's ridiculous, of course it's not," Daniel said. Peggy looked over his face as she considered arguing. He was thinking about the War, Peggy could see. That sobered her a bit. She was wrong, of course. Self-control without any other moral guidance could destroy almost anything. Only a reverence and love for something living and vulnerable, something worth honoring and protecting gave one true moral guidance. Maybe that's what he feared, that Peggy would turn her self-discipline against what she loved and try to destroy a part of herself. Maybe, she thought quite severely, she should destroy this one friendship to preserve the other relationships in her life. Somehow her passion seemed to set it in discord. That seemed more clearly a moral conflict now. Peggy cared for Angie and knew they gave a great deal to one another. Daniel seemed somehow able to read her thoughts. He tugged a bit at her shoulder, and she looked at him.

            "I know you're trying to protect us," Daniel said. "But you can't protect us from yourself. You are what we want." He was speaking for himself and Lynn and Steven. Peggy thought that was fair simply because he often understood them so well. She put her hand on his shoulder.

            "How should I do this?" Peggy asked.

            "Get Angie on board," Daniel said, "And find a way to fit this into all the other things. Pick a day of the week that you can be together, do whatever to set it in motion. You just have to talk it through with Angie first."

            "What about you, darling?" Peggy said.

            "What about me?" Daniel said. "I will say what I want. You know I will. I tried to get your attention for more than a year all the way back when it started without much encouragement. I am pretty sure I can ask for your attention now that we've been married for years, Peg." Peggy laughed softly at this. "If you let yourself try to get what you want, I think you can make it happen," Daniel said.

            Peggy allowed that reasoning time to settle over her. She thought carefully before she made him an answer. They talked it over a while longer. Eventually, Peggy found that she had nothing more to say.

            "I bet Angie is feeling stressed out," Daniel said. Peggy nodded. She suddenly realized what she would do if she weren't trying to be so stoic about all of this. That was the first moment when Peggy felt that perhaps she could see her way to managing both relationships.

            "I'm going to run down and call her," Peggy said. Daniel seemed surprised and pleased actually to hear this. "Still be here when I get back?" Peggy asked him as she stood up. He laughed and tossed her pillow at her.

            Peggy went out softly and dialed Angie's number. She knew Angie kept the phone beside her bed. Only a few people had the number. She heard it ring only once before it was lifted. Angie's voice indicated that she had been deeply asleep and also was a bit concerned to be receiving an early call.

"Angie," Peggy said. The weight she felt in the silence showed that her voice had registered as her own. "About what happened last night, don't panic, darling. Don't freak out. We will talk it through and figure it out."

            Another silence followed. Peggy heard a sound that she imagined was Angie turned over in the bed. She was quiet still on the other end of the line.

            "Understand, love?" Peggy asked lightly.

            "Yes," Angie said. "And I won't."

            "I am tempted to try to make you promise," Peggy said. She heard Angie laugh very softly. Angie's voice came out more clear.

            "I won't go anywhere or do anything drastic," Angie said in a mildly placating tone.

            "And no self-loathing," Peggy said. The silence now felt like a receptive one. "I will talk to you soon, then?"

            "Yes," Angie said.

            "You know that I love you," Peggy said in an almost joking manner. Angie laughed a bit again on the other line.

            "Yeah," Angie said. "I got that down. I love you, too, English."

            Peggy felt a bit amazed to hear her old nickname from Angie spoken again all of a sudden. She felt inclined to grin, probably more for the old feelings it evoked than anything. She stood grinning in silence a moment.  

            "I'll let you get back to bed," Peggy said.

            "Thanks for calling me," Angie said. They hung up the line. Peggy stood with her hand on the desk and leaned into it for a moment. She took a deep breath and let it out.

            Peggy and Daniel spent the morning making what they referred to as a "fierce" breakfast for all of them with a plan go out in the snow afterwards. They cooked up a stack of pancakes that Peggy layered together with butter then dusted with powdered sugar. They made ham and sausages and fried eggs to go alongside of them. They made some thin hot chocolate, as well.

            They went in together and woke Lynn and Steven when it was all ready. They carried them out to the kitchen, Daniel leaning hard into his cane with Steven on his hip, and put them into their chairs. The excitement woke them up quickly this morning. They both got up during their meal to look out the window, and neither Peggy nor Daniel said anything about them leaving their plates. They came back on their own when they were ready.

            They all spent the day out playing the snow. Daniel said he fully intended them to wreck every square foot of the snow in their backyard, then they could venture out if they needed in order to find more. They made snow angels and a snowman, whose name Daniel declared to be Henry Button. He had a way of adding these funny inclusions to things they did together so that the children remembered them long afterwards, and Peggy felt that this would be one of those details. She would be telling and hearing stories about Henry Button, she suspected, all the way into the summer.

            Peggy stood aside for a moment and watched them, as they put an old scarf of hers around Henry Button's neck, as she could not help but think of the snowman now. Peggy felt a sort of pang in her chest of wondering whether it were truly right to want to add anything to her life. She had a moment of wondering if she were ungrateful or perhaps merely insatiable in some way. Anything she felt, however, that made her more capable of loving was the right course to take. Daniel was mainly worried about the state of her heart, which was, she had to admit, tied up with all of their well being. And Angie counted, as well, now that Peggy could evaluate things more equally. She felt herself swallow hard, as a commitment to try and make both relationships work finally found its place in her heart and connected with her resolve. She did feel, she had to admit, lighter and more whole, even in these first moments, now that she was no longer pitted against herself.


	6. Sharing Secrets

            Peggy spent over a week gathering her determination and talking the matter of her starting a parallel relationship alongside her marriage with Daniel a couple more times. She finally felt ready to ask Angie to become her lover again. They had seen each other only once, since they had kissed again. Peggy had tried to put Angie at ease without drawing too near the subject. Angie seemed dedicated to putting it behind them. So Peggy felt prepared to find Angie rather surprised when she brought it up with a genuine proposition for her.

            Peggy could not think of a really tactful way to approach all of this. So she came over to Angie's early one evening when she was invited, after having told Daniel of her intent. He stated quite casually that he wouldn't expect her back until the morning. They were standing in Angie's living room when Peggy decided to just have out with it.

            "Angie," Peggy started. "I've talked it through with Daniel, just so you know, before I've asked you this. Would you want us to be lovers again? Me and you?"

            Angie looked at Peggy with a severe expression. Peggy could not read anything else in the look on her face, except severity. She stared at Peggy for a long moment. She worked her lips and swallowed once. Her eyebrows came up and dropped again. Angie brought her hand to her cheek and slapped it a few times with a slightly audibly tapping and shook her head swiftly once.

            "I'm sorry," Angie said. "Can you repeat that?" She looked hard at Peggy's face. Angie's eyes were wider than usual, and she had her lips pursed. Peggy cleared her throat.

            "I'm asking you if you should like to be lovers with me again. Daniel and I talked it through. It won't cause us any harm," Peggy said. Peggy did not know what else to add, so she just stopped there. Angie blinked a few times and still stood silently with that same expression fixed on her face.

            "I don't understand how that's a question," Angie said. She gave a confused look. She seemed quite stunned. Peggy had no idea what her comment meant.

            "Do you mean a question or an option?" Peggy asked. Angie raised her eyebrows. She parted her lips and took a deep breath and held it there.

            "Both," Angie said. She let her breath out slowly. Her expression shifted finally. She had her brows furrowed now.

            "Well, it is an option," Peggy said almost gently. "So now it's a question."

            "You already know how bad I want you," Angie said in a voice that seemed hushed by the weight carried upon the statement. She rubbed at her eyes and looked at Peggy again. Peggy gave Angie a sort of bewildered smile. Then she gave Angie a searching look that she hoped would encourage a response. Nothing was forthcoming.            

            "Is that a yes?" Peggy asked her. Angie looked overwhelmed again for a moment. She ran her hand across her mouth. She held her hand up then, as if to keep something at bay. She blinked again a few times rapidly.

            "I honestly don’t know if I can answer that," Angie said.  

            "Do you need some romancing first?" Peggy asked as a bit of a joke.

            Angie burst into laughter at this. She pushed a tear from her eye after a minute. Peggy saw that she had grown somewhat emotional now that she was more animate again. She had been really thrown by Peggy's sudden question and was not sure how to engage with it. Peggy stood with a grin on her face and a hand on her hip.

            Peggy considered whether or not she ought to move in and kiss Angie then. A moment passed between them in which Angie noticed Peggy looking at her and read this developing intent in her expression. Peggy saw the desire in Angie's face, especially around her eyes, and her lips parted just slightly. She turned her face down then and grew somewhat expressionless. Peggy thought she might be going to cry for a moment. She turned her face up then and held her hand up again, as if to keep some force from coming into her.

            "Can you… just ask me that again?" Angie said. "Just one more time? Next time I see you?" Peggy laughed at her softly. She nodded consent to this.

            "Yes," Peggy said. Angie took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She put her hands to her waist in the back. Angie seemed relieved.

            "I didn't mean to put you on the spot," Peggy said. Angie smiled. Peggy saw her hand come around to the middle of her chest unthinkingly. They stood there for a moment.

            Peggy stepped in close and put her hand to Angie's face. Angie closed her eyes in response. She leaned a bit into Peggy's hand. Angie's focus was lost inwardly, as she felt where Peggy touched her. Peggy saw her breath had deepened and suspected that her heart was beating hard. It made her aware of the similar response in her own body. She stood breathing as if she had been running. She quelled an urge to kiss Angie on the neck. She worked her lips, then bit her own lip in order to manage it.

            Peggy laughed at herself. Angie stood up straight again to look at her face. She smiled with a sort of one-sided grin and tipped her head up to ask Peggy "what." Peggy just shook her head. Peggy reached and lightly touched Angie on the neck where she had just wanted to kiss her. She raised her eyebrow. Angie grinned at her in response. Peggy stayed in close to Angie for another long moment, then she backed away.

            "Next time," Peggy said in a falsely severe tone. Angie gave a stiff nod in the same vein. "It's a plan."

            "Unless you change your mind about me," Angie said. Peggy laughed even though she felt miffed by this comment. Angie gave a smile that showed she knew she would get Peggy with that comment.

            "About what exactly?" Peggy asked.

            "How much you trust me," Angie said. She gave Peggy a contrived, challenging glance. She had a sort of smirk.

            "To do what exactly?" Peggy asked. A silence passed as Angie considered how to answer the joke. She spoke halfway between humor and seriousness.

            "I think you've got a lot of information already about what you can trust me to do," Angie said.

            She turned away from Peggy, as she said this. Peggy felt the heat of the flirtation in her own body, as she saw the muscles in Angie's jaw flex. Angie had her hands braced on her hips and stood a bit rigid. She stepped away suddenly and headed towards the kitchen. When Peggy followed her, Angie was getting a glass out and had a bottle of bourbon on the counter. Peggy leaned into the side of the doorway.

            "I got to have a drink," Angie said. She poured herself a small drink of bourbon and drank it quickly. She poured another about the same size. She held the bottle up with a gesture. Peggy gave a nod, and Angie snatched another glass from the cupboard and came over as she poured her a drink. She handed it to Peggy. They toasted with a light clink of their glasses. Peggy stalled as she brought the glass to her lips, trying to think of a toast.

            "I can't think of anything," Peggy admitted as she took a sip.

            "To all the beautiful sex we're gonna' have," Angie said. Peggy nearly lost the drink, as her responding laugh caught her. She finally managed to swallow it down. She grinned at Angie and felt herself blushing. Angie looked pleased. "Looks like," Angie said as if slightly astonished by the idea. She shook her head, as if in disbelief. She went to set the bottle down on the small, round table in her kitchen.

            They spent a more regular evening together after this. Peggy felt relieved by the change in the tone, as the strain that seemed to exist just below the surface the past days shifted into something else entirely. There seemed almost an energy there now, a sort of aliveness. Peggy headed out just as the sun was setting. Angie walked with her to the door, then gave a indication that she would follow her out.  

            "I'll walk you out to your car," Angie said. Peggy opened the door and led them down the front walk. Angie came right up to the car with her. As soon as she got into the driver's seat, Peggy rolled down the window.

            "Now you're all inside there and contained," Angie said. She put her hands on door around the window. Angie leaned down and in a bit, and Peggy leaned over towards the window. Angie kissed Peggy once. The kiss felt stunning in its grace, and they lingered there for a long moment.

            Angie leaned back then. She kept in close and searched Peggy's eyes for a moment. Peggy saw that Angie's eyes were well up with tears, but she did not look sad anymore. She had a small smile on her face. The sight of her expression made Peggy's eyes well up in response, and she laughed a bit.

            "Was that better or worse than nothin'?" Angie asked as her eyebrow cocked.

            "Infinitely better," Peggy said in a steady tone, right at once. Angie stood back a bit from the window a bit more. She finally grinned, her full grin. Peggy had not seen it in a while. She smiled back as if by instinct.

            Peggy finally turned the key in the ignition. She looked over at Angie again before she worked the gears. Peggy almost felt a bit silly, as her own heart felt as if it were going to burst.

            "Bye for now," Angie said.

            "Catch you next time," Peggy said. Angie caught the suggestion in that and clearly enjoyed it. Angie stood back away from the car. She turned after a moment and walked towards the door. She looked back to wave once at Peggy.

 

            When Peggy got home, Daniel was sitting at the kitchen table with Lynn and Steven. They were surprised to see her. She heard Daniel and Lynn say hello, and Steven jumped up and ran over to her. She picked him up. He pointed at the fridge, and told Peggy about his math homework. She went over to see it. He had not missed any of the problems, and his teacher, Mrs. Barclay, had written him a kind little note, Peggy saw.

            "That's marvelous," Peggy said. "Did you work hard, darling?" Steven leaned his head into her neck and nodded. "I'm very proud," Peggy said.

            She came over to the table and patted Lynn, who barely sat up from what Peggy suspected was a book report, as she was writing an essay, to say hello.

            "How are you, Miss Carter?" Peggy asked.

            "Good," Lynn said.

            "Are you concentrating?" Peggy asked.

            "Yeah," Lynn managed. Peggy smiled and gave her back a rub. She saw that it made her smile and sit up straighter to stretch her back like a cat before she went on with the sentence she was writing. Peggy came across and kissed Daniel with her hand braced on the side of his neck to keep her balance with Steven, who was now a bit burrowed in. Daniel looked curious and a bit baffled.

            "She didn't go for it?" Daniel asked. Peggy laughed softly at his phrase. He gave a slightly strained look, as he had not meant it quite that way. She knew what he had meant.

            "She asked me to wait and ask her again next time," Peggy said. Daniel pushed a chair out for her, and she sat down with Steven. She rubbed his back now that she was sitting down. He seemed a little sleepy already by how heavy he felt in her arms. Daniel sat smiling and thoughtful.

            "She's probably overwhelmed. Remember when I ran out on you?" Daniel asked. He sat smiling. Peggy did not know what he meant for just a moment, then she realized he meant the first night they openly decided they would be lovers.

            "You did not run," Peggy argued vaguely.

            "My own form of running," Daniel said, making a joke about his leg. Peggy shook her head mildly. He sat smiling at his own humor. "You're a lot to take on," he said to Peggy. Peggy gave him an incredulous look. Daniel stood up and put a tea kettle on for her, since she was holding Steven. He put his hand on her shoulder as he passed. Peggy would have teased him about trying to make friends, but she decided to let it drop.

            When the two of them climbed into bed that night, Daniel came over to the middle. Peggy came right up against him, and they lay with their arms wrapped about one another. He seemed tired and a little serious to Peggy now.

            "I feel like I got a lucky bonus having you home," Daniel said. Peggy laughed softly. He always said this exact same phrase when she was home unexpectedly. She ran her fingers through his hair. He seemed heavier than usual with thought to Peggy. She wondered why. She suspected it was work, as he had been very much distracted with the SSR. He had not said anything about it of late.

            "How's work?" Peggy asked him lightly. He lay still and sort of rubbed his face against the pillow and her arm. He took a deep breath. She knew it was work, then, for certain. She shifted herself a bit in order to look at him. He shifted so that she could see his face. He seemed very serious. Peggy assumed he was sorting what he could say, although she knew he also broke codes of confidentiality with her all the time.

            "It's been rough," Daniel said. Peggy saw a tiredness in his expression then that troubled her slightly. She felt almost that he had been concealing this.

            "Difficult cases?" Peggy asked him. He started to bite his lip, which he did when he was stressed and nervous. He shook his head a bit.

            "No," he said. "More Thompson." Peggy listened closely and waited. Daniel looked her in the eyes again before he went on. "Shelley got committed to a hospital over a nervous breakdown." Shelly was Jack's wife.

            "Oh my," Peggy said severely. She felt her heart quicken a beat in her chest. That was not a safe place for a woman. "When was this?" she asked.

            "A few weeks back," Daniel said. "I haven't pieced it all together, but it sounds like she tried to commit suicide." Peggy look at Daniel utterly astonished now. She could not imagine why he had not said. He could see this in her expression.  

            "Jack hasn't been honest about it. I pieced it together from things he kept saying. Took me a couple of weeks myself," Daniel said. He ran his hand over his eyes. "I'm just tired of him to be honest." He looked like he felt like a real jerk for saying this. Peggy shook her head mildly.

            "He ran the office like a little boy's club he presided over for the first year," Peggy said.

            "I know," Daniel said. That lightened the mood. Jack had been a terrible chief of operations at first. He listened to Daniel, though, and trusted him. So Peggy suspected that Daniel felt more loyal to him than he should. Jack was a natural leader, if a bad one. He had learned a great deal over the years, even if he was still himself. Daniel scratched at his hairline. He looked very troubled.

            "How is he at work?" Peggy asked. Daniel's eyebrow came up in a way that indicated he felt angry beneath the surface. The look was rare, and Peggy caught it right away before it faded. Daniel looked worn through now to Peggy. There was an emotional quality to it that she had not quite noticed in the weeks before. It was not quite like the regular times of increased workload when they came through the agency.

            "He's a mess," Daniel admitted.

            "How so?" Peggy asked.

            "Barking at the men, then mostly hiding in his office," he said. "Everything is all tangled up, too. He can't keep himself sorted. He drinks all the time now."

            "Is he angry do you think?" Peggy asked.

            "He is," Daniel said, and Peggy saw his anger flash out a bit more vividly. "I wish the bastard wouldn't confide in me. He thinks everything wrong with their marriage is her fault."

            "That's convenient for him," Peggy said. Daniel scoffed.

            "Sure, if he never wants to actually fix anything. They've been married four years. I thought he'd like women more. He liked her so much at first," Daniel said.

            "You thought that their marriage would change how he felt about women?" Peggy asked.

            "Yeah," Daniel said. His tone indicated that he thought this was silly now. "He hates her maybe even more than most now."

            "More than he hated me, that's saying something," Peggy said.

            "And you saved his life," Daniel said.

            "So did she, I remember him saying," Peggy said.

            "That's all hogwash," Daniel answered. "He was just trying to act needy to get her then." Daniel rubbed hard at his eyes. He took a deep breath. The tension in Daniel's body gave out then. Peggy held him more tightly in her arms. Daniel was quiet for a moment.

            "I'm afraid he's going to go down," Daniel said. He meant Jack. Peggy wondered just what he was picturing. She took this very seriously coming from Daniel. He was not given to any degree of flourish in his speech.

            "You think he'll take the SSR with him?" she asked.

            "No," Daniel said. He was really just worried for Jack, she could feel.

            "What about you, darling?" Peggy said. She knew Daniel worked closely with Jack. Daniel took a long look at her face. He sighed again.

            "No," he said. "I just don't want to see it go down." Peggy thought that was fair.

            She held Daniel in close. He seemed relieved now that he had told her. As she turned off her lamp that night, she felt a bit glad that Angie had needed some more time to decide and she had come home after all. She felt like Daniel had been holding this story in for some time.

 

            Peggy knew that they were going to talk it over again the next time she went over to Angie's. Less than a week had passed, and Angie asked her over with a sort of heaviness in her tone. Peggy decided to be a bit forward as they made plans.

            "I've got the night if you want me," Peggy said.

            "Might bring some things just in case," Angie said.

            They cooked and ate dinner together, then sat at the little table Angie had pulled in from the backyard before winter had set in fully. The house had large, glass doors that led outside and a lamppost that peaked up over the fencing. As a result, the snow was illuminated and the bare boughs of the pear tree made a lovely set of lines against the red brick of the fencing. Angie had bought some expensive chocolates and broke these out after dinner. She made them a round of tea and brought it to the table.

            "Are you trying to seduce me?" Peggy asked her as a joke. This was essentially her favorite combination of tastes in the entire world, as far as she could remember and repeat them.

            Angie just sat across from her and said nothing to that. Angie drank part of her tea and picked out a chocolate. She told Peggy a little about the shop where she got them and said it was at a recommendation from Jarvis from months before. Peggy noticed she spoke lightly and yet seemed quite serious.

            She thought Angie was thinking of Peggy's joke and what was going to happen between them. They sat and ate and drank their tea for several minutes. When they were through, Angie sat forward and put her elbow on the table. She gave a severe sort of sniff.

            "I need to know a little more about what I'm being offered," Angie said.

            "Ask me anything you like," Peggy said.

            "I got to know something about how this is gonna' end," Angie tried to explain. Peggy gave a look to show that she did not understand. "Am I being offered something that just ends one day?" Angie asked. "Honestly, I'd rather a steady friendship at whatever distance than a flare up that breaks us right apart."

            "No," Peggy said. "You must know that's now what I want either."

            "Is Daniel seeing this as a small kind of thing?" Angie asked.

            "No," Peggy said. The tone came out quite solid. "He is very much aware of my feelings about you, Ang." Angie seemed to listen closely and look at Peggy's face to see under the words even. She sat thinking for a moment. She stretched her back then and shifted a bit in her seat. She looked unsettled still.

            "This means two relationships of great depth," Peggy said aloud for Angie to hear. Angie nodded at her and seemed to relax a bit. She seemed to be thinking again for a long moment.

            "If it gets real messy, though, you gotta' choose them, Peggy," Angie said to Peggy. Peggy thought it strange that she would need this kind of agreement in order to feel secure. She thought there was another way to go about this rather than agreeing that Peggy's other relationship trumped whatever she had with Angie.

            "I intend to make this work," Peggy responded avidly. "You should think through, though, how it will be for you. If you can't be with me when I'm with someone else in this way, I understand." Angie almost laughed at that.

            "I got lots else, too," Angie said. "You might say acting is my other woman." She smiled at Peggy.

            "I think that's fair," Peggy said.

            "I don't want to be a home wrecker, Peg," Angie said frankly. Peggy shook her head faintly. She did not entirely know what to say to that. She could not quite take it seriously herself. She searched her the right thing to say.  

            "I am sure that everyone involved is quite looking out for everyone else and advocating for themselves," Peggy explained. Angie liked that. She smiled in a way that made her sway back a bit in her seat.

            "So I got you and Daniel on my side," Angie said. "And now I got to advocate for myself."

            "Precisely," Peggy said.

            Angie ran her hand over her face and rested her chin lightly in her palm with her elbow on the table. She looked at Peggy in silence, and Peggy saw her desire for Peggy come to the surface. She sat up again and pursed her lips, still deep in though it seemed, but no longer unsettled.

            Angie seemed both quite decided and also a bit stalled to Peggy. Peggy thought of saying something, then she decided that there was really nothing more to say. She sat looking over Angie for a moment, and tried to take her in whole. Instead of feeling overwhelmed, Peggy felt at home. She had a feeling of awe, a kind of stillness that carried within it a great energy. She felt reminded of the few times she had ever felt a place she visited was sacred. Angie looked a little nervous still, as Peggy watched her movements when she took a last drink from her cup of tea. Peggy stood and came across to her. She knelt herself down beside Angie's chair. Angie turned her body in the seat to line up with Peggy more. She put her hand on Peggy's shoulder very softly. She looked over Peggy's face. Her eyes had grown heavy at once. She did not have that same panicked look she had before that kept Peggy from kissing her.

            Peggy looked over Angie's whole body for a moment to access what all she felt. Peggy ran her hands very softly across Angie's legs through fabric of her dress that felt almost delicate despite its thickness. She put her hands to Angie's sides. She turned her own face up and drew Angie forward a bit. Angie put her hand to the side of Peggy's face and leaned down to kiss her.

            The feel of their mouths on one another seemed to pour into Peggy like a sudden rush of the heat from an entire bottle of wine in her body. She felt it all the way in her own legs, and she felt a bit shaky despite being braced by the solidness of her position. She let her mouth open against Angie's. When their tongues touched, Peggy felt a small sound escape her own throat. Angie's hand came to the side of her throat at once, as if to feel the sound there. She kissed Peggy more deeply and pulled at her a little.

            Peggy came up just a bit and got her arms around Angie. Peggy felt the most astonishing relief, as if she had been carrying a pack for so long that she had quite forgotten what it felt like to be without it, and she had just put it down and felt her body stand aright. The feel of Angie in her arms, even at these uncanny angles, felt so correct. Peggy was not distracted by any confusion that would distance her from herself and from Angie this time. They kissed for as long as they could in this position. When they felt the strain from it, Peggy sank back down a bit. Angie leaned her forehead down into Peggy's for a long moment, while they sat quiet and trying almost to catch their breath. She felt utterly at peace for a moment. Angie turned Peggy's face up to look at her. She swallowed hard before she spoke, and Peggy hoped she knew what she was going to say. She felt surprised at how long it took Angie to find her voice and speak.

            "Take me to bed," Angie asked as a sort of gentle question. Peggy felt herself fill with a kind of heat in response. It was the tone in Angie's voice and the precise phrase. Peggy had expected something light and more like "should we go to bed," and this was not quite what Angie was asking for from her. She wanted her to lead them somewhat, because she felt somewhat overcome. Peggy was on it.

            She stood and took Angie's hand and led her into her bedroom. She felt quite bold leading Angie through her own house this way. The heat was on in the room, and vents were already open, so it felt beautifully warm when they came in. Peggy shut the door, and when she turned back, Angie had stepped into the middle of the room and seemed to be looking at the bed. She turned to Peggy, as Peggy approached without any hesitancy. Peggy drew her in close and kissed her, softly at first, though they quickly deepened and grew heavy. Peggy tried to feel out how fast or quickly she ought to go. When they used to be lovers, she was very good at deciphering this. She thought now that she ought to go quite slowly. If she could make this all quite deliberate, she thought that would be best.

            As she glanced at Angie's face, with her eyes closed and seeming almost vulnerable, Peggy thought suddenly of the frantic rush of their love making at Angie's hotel. She felt a new flash of remorse in her chest. That was not how they ought to have come together, especially after so long apart, Peggy realized. She felt that she had handled them both without care in a way. What was happening now was on her own terms and in her right mind. She meant to do right by them both to make up for it. Peggy kissed Angie softly and slowly. She felt as if each kiss undid one of the hard, rushed kisses they had shared before. Angie seemed so heavy and deep in the feel of this that she could hardly breath, and Peggy held her tight in part to hold her up. When her eyes opened, she glanced over Peggy's face and seemed almost dazed, and Peggy felt her sway and respond almost without moving herself to Peggy's touch.

            Peggy turned to look over, then she brought them nearer the side of the bed. She drew Angie with her by the hand and stopped the two of them near the heat vent that poured warm air gently into the room. She kissed Angie a few times, each kiss a long experience that absorbed all of her focus. Peggy turned Angie around then. She knitted her arms across Angie's chest and held her close to herself for a moment. Angie stood still very relaxed in her arms. She leaned her head over and back a bit into Peggy's shoulder. Peggy moved to kiss the line of Angie's neck. She moved along slowly, letting her mouth linger until the skin at each place grew as warm as her mouth. Angie let her breath out haltingly, and she brought her hand up over her shoulder to touch Peggy's face.

            Peggy pushed her forward just the slightest bit to untie the dress she wore and lower the zipper underneath. She saw Angie's exposed back as it was revealed. Peggy felt a bit faint for a single second, then she pushed the dress down a bit off Angie's shoulders and kissed her back. She worked her way down, drawing the dress down with her. When she stood up straight again, Angie turned around with a sudden rush of movement.

            Angie put her arms around Peggy's neck and kissed her at once. Peggy pushed the dress off her hips, then pulled her in close and up towards herself. She turned a bit, almost lifting Angie, so she would step out away from the dress. Peggy felt Angie grow impatient then. She stepped back and helped her to remove her own clothing. She reached after to finish undressing Angie, who seemed to grow suddenly shy of being seen naked by Peggy.

            Peggy stood back a bit with her hands on Angie's shoulders. Perhaps she was rushing a bit, she thought. She had stopped before drawing off the last of her undergarments. Angie swallowed and glanced down, as if very aware of herself. She seemed distracted for a moment. She met Peggy's eyes again and seemed to have grown very serious.

            "What is it?" Peggy asked her in almost a whisper. Angie brought her hand up and brushed her knuckle across her nose. She put her hand to her hip after. Peggy looked over her and tried to read what was underneath her mood. Angie looked back directly at Peggy. She shook her head just a bit.

            "I been with a lot of people," Angie said. Peggy felt her eyebrows raise slightly. She was not entirely sure what Angie meant.

            "That's all right by me, darling," Peggy said. Angie did not respond to this and still looked closely at Peggy's face. Peggy felt this was something else besides that. She concentrated on Angie's face.

            "It's never been anything like what it is with you. Barely a glimpse, even in the decent relationships," Angie said. She looked down at herself again, and Peggy realized she was not really considering her body when she did. "I'm entirely myself," she said, "Through and through."

            Angie just stood a moment, as if regaining her composure. Her breath was slightly belabored. She looked very serious. Peggy felt herself smile softly. She really did not know what Angie was feeling, but she felt that she did not need to understand entirely. Angie's eyes moved over Peggy's body now, and Peggy herself grew a bit self-conscious. She glanced down at herself and then grinned. Angie saw that she had grown a bit coy, and she cocked one eyebrow in response. That seemed to bring Angie back to the moment somehow, and she moved with a sort of confidence afterwards.

            Angie removed the last of her own clothes in a quick set of gestures. She stepped in close to Peggy immediately and slid an arm around her neck and the other around her waist. Peggy felt her capacity for self-consciousness slip away at once. Angie kissed Peggy, and their kisses took on a life of their own. Peggy could not guess how long had passed when they broke from their kissing a bit to look at one another again. She had forgotten almost everything outside of what she felt in this moment. Angie looked over her face and took a deep breath.

            "I feel like I'm getting married," Angie said. Peggy felt a burst of laughter come over herself in response to this. Angie stood smiling with her arms still around Peggy's neck, and their bodies held against each other's.

            "Isn't that your nightmare?" Peggy asked her in surprise. Angie smiled deeply, though she did not laugh. She turned away for just a moment to glance at the bed.

            "No, this is not my nightmare," Angie said and looked back at her.

            Peggy thought a bit longer over what she had said. There was an incredible feeling of depth between them that carried right over and mingled into the passion between them now. Peggy's thoughts flickered over her own wedding night. She and Daniel rushed into their love making, as they hoped to catch some of the energy of the day before they crashed from it. She remembered, though, the feel of their first times with one another. And she remembered the time long ago when she and Angie had first kissed and then gone to bed together for the first time. This did carry a feeling like those times, like the beginning of something. There was a felt sense of vulnerability, not just within each of them, but between them, as well, as if they were setting the tone of something, laying the foundation of what would be after this.

            Peggy imagined that Angie could almost read the imprint of these thoughts in her face. When they kissed again, they felt even more present in this moment. She felt absolutely rooted within herself and her own intent. Peggy wrapped her arms all the way around Angie's body and held her almost hard against herself. When Angie moved to step back so they could get into the bed, Peggy moved with her almost effortlessly.

            They drew the enormous pile of blankets back and got in between the sheets with one another. Peggy felt disrupted a moment from the momentum they had drawn out between them. She touched Angie's body quite gently, as if grown timid. After a few minutes, she was touching her more freely. Angie lay quiet and calm, Peggy thought, and felt all of this. She moved finally to come up and kiss Peggy, she kissed her with a deep kiss that struck Peggy as remarkably tender.

            Angie ran her hand down the length of Peggy's body as they kissed. They seemed both to remain vividly aware of one another as they began to make love. Angie kissed Peggy's body, moving along her easily. Peggy moaned at the touch of her mouth with no self-consciousness at the sound of her own voice. When Angie started to lead her with her hands, Peggy let herself lay back. She felt a depth of pleasure at Angie's touch and then at her own experience of ecstasy, as she came to it in Angie's arms for the first time in so long. The feeling seemed to reach not only through but underneath her somehow, as if to draw her more into being, as if she herself were the beloved subject of an artist's craft of making.

            When Peggy turned them to come over top of Angie, after she had drawn Angie over herself and kissed her and ran her hands over Angie's body again and again, she forced herself to stop and look over her fully. Peggy saw how Angie's body trembled slightly, as if in anticipation of some experience in which it would be entirely overcome. She touched over every part of her and kissed her breasts until Angie quite clung to Peggy and cried out at the feel of it. Peggy held her up, as she arched her back fully to press further into Peggy.

            Peggy reached up and dragged the pillow down. She took Angie in her arms and leaned her back. She came right over her for a moment and held both of Angie's hands up by her face, as she kissed her deeply. The pillow lifted her in the middle and heightened everything in a way, as Peggy had intended. She kissed Angie until she seemed quite breathless, then she moved down only reluctantly letting go of her hands.

            Peggy put her mouth on Angie. She felt fully absorbed a moment in the sensation of memory, as her taste had not changed at all. Peggy's body remembered what it had forgotten in all of an instant, and the she sat out to learn something new. She held Angie's hips and occasionally ran her hands up over the length of her stomach to her breasts or her neck. She ran her hands down the length of her thighs, as well. Peggy tried to find out just how long she could make it last, before Angie would be overcome with pleasure. Somehow, she felt that Angie had changed since she was younger. She seemed more receptive now, and she let Peggy take her for so long that Peggy felt herself marvel at it all.

            When finally she realized that Angie would stay with her as long as she wanted, Peggy considered bringing her all the way up into the height of her pleasure. She stretched it out a while longer, and then let them finish. Angie cried out in a way that Peggy knew she had never heard before, even during those years when they had made love with each other so many times. She leaned up as she finished out to hold onto Peggy's shoulders, as if to brace herself. When she lay back again and relented, Peggy stayed with her a while longer, growing soft and incredibly gentle, before coming up over her to kiss once more.  

 

            They lay together recovering after for what Peggy already knew would be the next of several rounds of love making during that same night. Angie touched Peggy's hand, the front and back, with her fingertips. She matched Peggy's fingers to her own, and Peggy remembered how often they had done this, years before.

            "You will tell me if this causes you problems at home, right?" Angie asked her softly.

            "Of course, I will. I shouldn't be able to keep something like that hidden. I'm not very good at compartmentalizing," Peggy said.

            "Even though you can hide an entire secret life of work?" Angie asked. Peggy laughed at this.

            "And my even-more-secret secret life, which even fewer people know about. I mean hidden from you," Peggy said. "It's a matter of vantage. You've got rather the insider's view. There's no hiding from you anymore. If there ever was."

            Angie just smiled deeply at this. She reached over to touch Peggy's face again, an easy and eager gesture now. She ran her fingertips across Peggy's lips. Peggy allowed her to do it, as if letting her discover how changed things were between them now. They'd spent a long time keeping their reserve.

            "You're the love of my life, you know, Peg," Angie said. Her voice came out steady and almost casual. Peggy felt a grin slowly spread across her face in response to this.

            "And you're mine," Peggy said. "Yours was the love that taught me all about loving, that first time." Angie smiled at her. "I don’t love you any less for not loving you alone, you know."

            "I don’t mind sharing," Angie said in the gentlest tease. "Daniel's the only man I've ever had in my intimate life that never caused me any problems. I love him just for that, and for how much he loves you, besides."

            "You have a big heart, Angie," Peggy said. "You put me in there despite myself, back when I was dodging everyone I feared I might love and then lose." Angie was quiet for a moment and stretched herself. She smiled then at Peggy and touched her face quickly.

            "I got to have a great heart if I want to love someone like you, Peggy Carter. You won't fit in there otherwise," Angie said. Angie lay back and put her arms over her head in another sort of stretch that stayed. "That's a silly way to let your heart break when you got other choices."

            Peggy felt too mystified and flattered by this comment to respond. She leaned in to kiss Angie, who moved up to meet her. Angie's hand touched her back just over where her heart beat underneath. Peggy could not help but notice how incredibly strong her own heart felt within her in this moment.

 

            Peggy loved the way she felt in her new life. She established quickly what kinds of privacy and openness she needed to maintain between her two lovers. She found it strangely easy to shift from a total focus on one to the other. Eventually, she realized this actually was related to her life as an agent for all those years. She could move from one sphere of her life to the next and back again quite gracefully. She felt more in love with life and all her own loved ones now. Daniel noticed, she thought, and he did not seem surprised.

            Peggy noticed several months later as the first warm days of summer came that she had felt distant from Daniel for a little while. Peggy thought over this more fully, while they were sitting out in the sun over at Christina's one Saturday. The children were all running through a set of sprinklers, and they were practically mad with the energy of that first truly warm day. Peggy watched Daniel. He did not seem to smile quite fully. He had seemed distracted with work and uninterested in fully making love with her at night. She had not fully noticed, as it all seemed like a usual cycle in his life. But this felt too long to her, now that she considered it more closely.

            The children wanted to stay out late, and Christina offered Peggy and Daniel to let them stay over. She asked the kids, and they were delighted. Peggy and Daniel made plans to go home for the evening and come back for breakfast in the morning. Peggy and Daniel would cook for everyone, and they would bring Lynn and Steven back afterwards.

            When they got back home, the sun was just setting. They went into their bedroom to put down their things. Peggy sat down on top of the bedcovers still fully dressed. She watched Daniel empty his pockets onto the dresser. She patted the bed once roughly when he turned around and smiled at him.

            She meant it as a flirtation, and Daniel caught this. He sat down on his chair and took off his shoes. He started to undo his suspenders. Peggy felt distressed watching him. He seemed very distant from himself. He seemed almost to be going to through the motions to appease her. She swallowed and felt her own brows furrowed in concern.

            "You look as if you were an ill regarded wife trying to match her husband's expectations," Peggy said.

            Daniel was unbuttoning his shirt and stopped at halfway when she said this. He seemed surprised by Peggy's comment and to be considering himself then. His energy changed, and Peggy saw his knee jump a few times in a sort of nervous motion. He leaned forward a bit with his arms on his knees. He put his face in his hands and ran them over it roughly. Peggy sat watching him closely and trying to distinguish what was happening underneath. He sat back and shook his head. He seemed to be fighting off some of his feelings.

            "What is it, darling?" Peggy asked.

            "I don't know, really," Daniel said. He looked distracted and agitated still. "I just feel kind of bad is all."

            "What sort of bad is it?" Peggy said. She moved herself over to sit on the side of the bed in front of him. She watched his face curiously.

            "Inadequate," he said. He ran his hands over his face again, hard, as if to wake himself for a shift on a night watch.

            Peggy put her hand on his knee, and he stared at her hand. She realized after a moment that he seemed self-conscious, and Peggy thought perhaps she should have touched him on the other side, where he could feel it still. That seemed utterly astonishing to Peggy. Daniel had always treated his injury lightly and seemed confident with his body still. He had some remorse at times over things he could not do. But he was not self-conscious with others in the way she thought she was now reading off of him.

            Peggy looked over him a moment and wondered if this were connected to her relationship with Angie. She had not thought this before, and her mind flicked over a few memories now. He had seen bruises on her thigh once in the bed and laughed deep in his chest. He said nothing. He did comment one morning while shaving when he saw the scratches on Peggy's back. "Good grief, Peggy," he said. She turned and realized what he meant and grew extremely abashed. He raised an eyebrow and gave a half grin, then he turned back to shaving. They were very private about the more passionate aspects of Peggy's love affair, much as she was about her love life with Daniel when she shared parts of her relationship with him with Angie.

            Perhaps somehow he was struggling with it now. Peggy felt now looking over him that this was more, deeper in some way. She just could not form any thoughts as to what could be happening otherwise. Daniel gave a deep sniff. Peggy saw that his eyes were tearing. Daniel never could weep. He had been raised too close to the wrong sorts of men, Peggy thought, and lost the capacity somewhere as a boy. In the spectrum of how he experienced and expressed his emotions, this was the equivalent in Peggy's mind to him weeping quite openly.

            She moved herself forward to barely sit on the edge of the bed. She took his face in her hands. She touched his jaw and his cheekbones. He closed his eyes a moment, then he opened them to look at her. Peggy let her hands rest on his shoulders afterwards.

            "You feel inadequate," Peggy repeated. He nodded with a stiff and hard sort of gesture. Peggy felt her eyebrows flick up in astonishment. "I don't suppose it would help then if I tell you how happy I am that I married you. You're the only man I can even think of who is worth marrying, I'll grant you. But you are also five times more remarkable as a friend and a husband and a father than I imagined before."

            Daniel closed his eyes. He seemed to be trying hard to listen. He took a deep breath and let it out. He seemed distracted still with his own thoughts and barely comforted. Peggy sat back again and watched him for a long and thoughtful moment. She was not sure what was happening to him.

            Peggy went to the bathroom and wiped off her lipstick quickly. She came back then and sat down again. She took Daniel's face in her hands once more. She kissed over every part of his face, softly. She kissed his neck. Then she took off his shirt. She kissed the tops of his shoulders, then she got him in the bed. She kissed his body practically all over. Daniel relented to this readily. He felt quite vulnerable to Peggy in some way she could not name. He seemed to be able to respond to the feel of her touch where he could not respond to her words.

            Later that night, they sat at the kitchen table with a last cup of tea. Daniel seemed deep in thought, but it seemed less like suffering now. Peggy reached over to take his hand, and he took hers right away. He seemed much more present and responsive.

            "Is this about me and Angie do you think?" Peggy asked him openly.

            Daniel's eyebrow flicked up at this. He thought for a moment. Peggy saw him work his leg for just an instant. She thought perhaps this was about the two of them. She tried to brace herself for a conversation in which she was going to have to tolerate some extremes in her own feelings. He bit at his lip. His eyebrows were deeply furrowed.

            "No," Daniel said heavily. "It's about work, I think." Peggy realized suddenly that he had been quiet about work for a while now. She thought Jack had leveled out, since Shelley came back from the hospital. Daniel put his face in his hands again. He spoke almost through them, as he brought them away again. "I want to leave my job."

            Peggy sat watching him for a moment. She realized with a sort of astonishment that this was all he had to say. This seemed such a small thing to Peggy, and something she had been expecting him to say years and years ago, that she almost could not accept that this was the cause of all his distress.

            "You want to leave the SSR?" Peggy asked him as if to clarity.

            "Yes," he said severely. Peggy could see that he felt torn about this. He must love his work more than she thought. "I can't hold it together for Thompson anymore," he said. Peggy gave him a deeply searching look. "I've been keeping him going, doing his work, fixing errors and filling gaps for a long time." Peggy felt herself lean back at this revelation. She wondered why she did not guess it before.

            "Are you afraid Jack will fall apart if you leave?" Peggy asked.

            "I don't care anymore," Daniel said. He seemed angry and resolved enough that Peggy thought this was actually true. Something had shifted in his loyalty to Thompson during this last spell.

            "All right," Peggy said. "When will you put in your notice?" She took a drink of her tea, as she felt that the weight of the conversation had cleared out a bit. Daniel, however, looked stricken and not in the least relieved. She watched him again for a moment.

            "How are we gonna' make it?" Daniel said. For a moment, Peggy had no idea what he was talking about. She stopped thinking quite as hard and got it right away.

            "Do you mean money?" she asked. Daniel nodded severely. Peggy might have laughed if she were not feeling so serious about Daniel's distress. "You are actually asking me?" she asked lightly to clarify. Daniel nodded.

            "Do you not look over the books?" Peggy said. Daniel seemed confused almost. She knew that he did. Peggy put her hand on his again. "We can certainly afford for you to transition jobs." Daniel's eyes came to hers like a hunted animal.

            "Who would hire me?" he said. Peggy realized then the depths of his distress. He felt suited only for work in the SSR. He had been hired there just after the war. He did not understand the depths of his innate ability or his credentials now either. He only saw his leg and the stigma it carried. "Michael is working now, but he should be able to keep his own money."   Peggy stood up and went and hugged Daniel to her for a moment. She could hardly bear to respond. She kissed the top of his head.

            "I can get us all through," Peggy said. "I can take more work. You know I can." Daniel looked up at her.

            "Will you have time?" he said. Peggy shrugged.

            "I can give up some things," Peggy said. She had already flicked through the changes in her mind. She thought perhaps he was concerned that she would have to give up some of the time she spent with Angie. Angie would hardly mind. Peggy realized that after all these years of their marriage, Daniel did not know how to ask for something that felt this big to him.

            Peggy shook her head in utter astonishment. Peggy put her hand somewhat heavily on top of Daniel's. She stared at his face almost incredulous for a long moment. She was trying to find something to say.

            "Would you really do that?" Daniel asked. His tone felt strained. Peggy drew his face up gently.

            "Are you joking?" Peggy said. Daniel was not joking.

            "You shouldn't have to work harder to compensate for me," Daniel said. Peggy felt herself bristle like a dog faced by an intruder. Apparently, some rather gendered logic had intruded on her marriage undetected. She put her hand on Daniel's chest.

            "Hush, darling," was all she could manage for tonight. She would find a more tactful way to say all this in the morning. She got Daniel by the hand and led him back to bed for now.

 

            Peggy waited for Angie to arrive before she would go and pick up Steven and carry him out to the car. Lynn was awake already. She sat at the table eating a plate of toast. She was in a "hungry phase" as Daniel referred to it, which Peggy suspected meant she was growing. Angie arrived and kissed Peggy on the cheek. Angie sat down at the table with Lynn, while Peggy went to call to see if Daniel was on his way. Peggy heard Lynn telling her stories from the week before, as if catching up with an old friend. She smiled at this.

            Daniel had slept at the office. Less than a month ago, Chief Thompson had resigned. Daniel suspected that a higher up caught onto to what was happening with him and eased him out. Daniel had been unexpectedly been named the Interim Chief while they were finding someone. It meant a raise in salary that would stay afterwards and a greater weight in the decision-making process when they found someone. He worked all hours now, trying to get the office sorted for the new chief. He seemed happier even at his most exhausted than Peggy had seen him in a long time.

            Daniel explained that he would have to meet them there. He needed to take a phone call from Moscow. They followed the usual routine of diner, grocery, and beach. Peggy merely pointed to the boat for Angie. She could have taken them out, but she waited for Daniel. Sail boats still weren’t interesting, Peggy felt, unless Daniel was there to explain them. His passion translated everything into something greater.

            Angie and Daniel had met for the first time a couple of weeks before. Angie came over to their house early, and Daniel was heading out. They shook hands sort of shyly, Peggy saw. They seemed a little enamored of one another, by proxy. Daniel said goodbye to Peggy and went out. As he made his way down the walk, Peggy felt the faintest hint of longing after the usual kiss that she did not receive from him. He was too sweet to kiss her in front of Angie.

            When Daniel arrived, Peggy saw him from a distance. She pointed, and the children ran to bring him over to where they were on the beach. He looked happy and energized. He had changed his clothes and shaved at work. He gave a shy sort of wave and a hello to Angie. Peggy ran her hand down his arm and held his hand for a moment.

            "Let me stay and insure the sand castle project concludes admirably," Peggy said.

            "Right you are," Daniel said in affirmation. He went to ready the boat. Peggy saw him say something to Angie and felt surprised when she followed after him.

            Peggy helped Lynn and Steven finish with their sand castle and admire it for long moment before they began to work themselves up to destroying it in a frenzy of glee, so that they could go get on the boat. Peggy suspected that while she did this, Daniel was explaining the basics of sailing to Angie. Peggy had procured a rather hard-won promise from Daniel that he would quit his job at the SSR to open the community sailing initiative that had sprung forth from his mind when he was thinking of leaving within the next decade before she would approve of him taking over as Interim Chief of the SSR. The plan would work if he could wrangle the support and appropriate permissions, which she felt absolutely certain he could do. A set of community owned boats would be open along with affordable lessons to New Yorkers, adults and young people, who would never see the water otherwise. He even had an idea for creating a program to take people who were ill or impaired and likely to assume they couldn't sail out on the water. She went for five years initially and got a decade, which she thought was decent enough.

            As Peggy, Lynn, and Steven made their way across the sand, Peggy saw Daniel reach out from the boat. Angie took his hand, and he helped her step in. A short time later, he said something, and Peggy saw Angie crack up at whatever he said. Peggy had a wave of feelings wash over her and was quite certain that her heart felt fuller in this moment than ever before in her life. She always thought that in moments like this, she could feel her heart expand, as if training itself to meet with so much in her life. Steven tugged at Peggy's hand, as he wanted her to pick him up. Still in stride, Peggy lifted him with a swing out that made him burst into a fit of giggles. Lynn wanted to know if Peggy would swim with them out on the water. Peggy said she would. She asked if Peggy would toss her, and Peggy said she would again. She carried Steven and held out her hand to Lynn as they made their way across the beach.


End file.
